We regularly have outcries aginst the idea that some engines are faster than others, and occasionally outcries about driving on kerbs and sometimes grumbles about driving standards.
The difficulty is that some of these things are difficult to police, some of them less so and some of them are done without thinking.
So, on the Forest Edge site there is an onboard camera video of a cadet race. The driver seems skilled and overtakes cleanly, maintaining his speed very well while the track goes from damp to dry line. In its way it is an excellent demonstration of everything we would like karting to be.
Except....every lap involves illegal driving. As the driver comes round into the new section he quite deliberately steers off track in order to improve his line into the new right angle corner and clearly he maintains a much faster speed on the following straight than any of his rivals.
So, is his gain in speed a result of better skill, a better engine or a non-compliant, driving advantage?
I'm not for a minute suggesting this is a 'thought out' cheat (If it was, he wouldn't have put it on the web) , I suspect it is the result of a driver seeing it improves his lap times and forgetting that by regularly putting two wheels or sometimes the entire kart over the white line, even though there is tarmac there, he risks the CoC noticing and deciding that this is deliberate, is in the book as 'unsafe' driving and can lead to disqualification. The CoC at Forest used to announce at drivers briefing that inside the white lines belonged to the drivers and outside belonged to him and he didn't favour tresspassers.
There's no use getting excited about the possible advantages of selecting the best parts for an engine if you can gain so much by one driving enhancement if everyone else sticks to the track. (And given that the driver is so good everywhere else, it shouldn't be necessary)
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