test ADJUST THE FRONT TRACK WIDTH

If you use soft tires on a track without much rubber you won’t get excessive bite (neither in the front nor the rear) and so you’re not going to feel the typical draw-back effect while accelerating. Even so, you need to make sure front and rear grip are well balanced. Setting the front track very wide increases bite at corner entry and mid-corner handling, but could give insufficient traction on corner exit, as the rear inside tire will remain slightly lifted even without much steering. In addition, as a rule of thumb, high front end grip causes greater rear end sliding.

The width of the rear track has a significant influence on the balance of the kart, but it should not be interpreted as a parameter that, on its own, directly determines the lifting of the inside rear wheel. In purely dynamic terms, with mass, lateral acceleration, center of gravity height, and setup conditions being equal, a wider track tends to reduce lateral load transfer on the axle in question, because it increases the rear support base of the kart. However, the actual behavior cannot be explained by this principle alone. The absence of a differential forces the chassis-axle system to work in such a way as to lighten or unload the inside rear wheel during cornering, in order to prevent the two rear wheels, connected by the same rigid axle, from hindering rotation through the corner. This effect depends on the combined work of front-end geometry, caster, chassis stiffness, axle, hubs, rear ride height, seat, tires, and the available level of grip. Changing the rear track also changes the way the axle-hub-wheel assembly works. The variation in rear-end width modifies the free length and the leverage through which the system operates, influencing the elastic response of the axle and the way the rear end takes load, releases it, and generates grip. In general, a wider rear track tends to make the kart more stable and progressive, especially during transitions and in phases where the rear end needs to slide in a controllable way. However, if it is excessive in relation to track conditions and the rest of the setup, it can reduce maximum rear grip and compromise traction on corner exit. Conversely, a narrower rear track tends to increase lateral grip and rear-end traction, but in high-grip conditions it can make the kart too constrained at the rear, less willing to rotate, more prone to understeer, or subject to lateral hopping.

Front track width is one of the factors that determines how much grip the front end has and so how fast the kart enters and covers corners. There are two main principles that regulate to front width. First: a wider front track increases the difference in height between the front tires while steering (in itself determined by the Ackermann angle), with an obvious consequence on grip. The second has to do with the fact that the front inside tire rotates more than the outside front tire, with an ideal rotation point that obviously varies according to front track width: the wider the track, the greater the radius of the ideal curve trajectory to follow. So, to sum up the two: the wider the front track, the more front end grip and the better performance through wide-radius bends. The effect is the opposite with a narrower front track.