Expert Advice
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Setting the seat in the right position
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Thomas Mardaga is the mechanic in force with the Kosmic factory team and 2015 KF World Championship winner with Karol Bazs. We would’ve liked to ask this huge expert to share every single one of his set-up secrets, but he just has too many. So... we decided to focus on just one, opting for an in depth explanation: seat installation and positioning. A key element of weight distribution over the four wheels and so the basis for a winning set-up, not to mention driver comfort, that needs to be taken very seriously.
We started out with an initial installation procedure that is standard for all seats. That’s the basis that the race department starts from to make all the necessary adjustments based on track tests. Technically, seat settings depend on the driver’s body build and weight as well as on track conditions. Yet, not everyone has the possibility to adapt the seat to the track and in any case this is the last set-up factor to work on. First, you try to balance the kart by making all the classic set-up adjustments. This said, the seat is shifted forward or backward by a max of 2-3 cm: it may not seem like much, but this range of variation has a huge effect on kart behavior, resulting in higher grip on the front end (forward) or in the rear (backward). In addition to this, there is a set of basic rules to seat positioning that anyone can follow.
The basic principle is keeping the center of mass as low as possible to avoid excessive weight transfer from the inside tires to the outside tires as the kart goes through bends, a condition that otherwise leads to unbalance and keeps the kart “tied up”, even when it has good bite.
Of course, there is a minimum height standard to respect, to keep the from seat from rubbing against the ground and the curb. With tall drivers, since you can only go so low, we tend to tilt the seat slightly backward: this way the drivers’ trunk, shoulders, and head sit lower, bringing the kart’s overall center of gravity closer to teh ground.
The KFJ is the only category where seat height sometimes is kept above the minimum, since drivers are still young and are allowed to have their view partially covered by the steering wheel.
Speaking of Kosmic in particular, we use a great OTK tool (ed. note: Kosmic is one of the brands in the OTK Group) that lets us adjust seat position and height with the kart propped up on a service trolley.
OTK follows standard settings defined based on driver height. In any case, the classic measurements are the distance between the axle and the rear edge of the seat and the distance between each of the two front seat edges and the front chassis tube. These last two are set with a 5 mm difference to offset the driver’s weight sligthly to the left. Why? To compensate for the 2-3 kg imbalance caused by the engine’s greater weight (right side of the kart) compared to the radiator (left side).
Generally speaking, yes. As I mentioned, OTK provides precise settings based on height ranges that have been defined to offer the maximum in terms of performance. We then fine-tune the vehicle set-up to accomodate for individual driver needs (and track conditions) by working on standard adjustment factors.
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