Karting is awesome, but 5:00am is always hard.

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YYMA4NdB9M&w=854&h=480]

Competition karting is some of the purest form of racing that I’ve experienced. Nothing will provide you with a more immersive experience with a race track than a kart. Nothing at all. You’re sitting as one with the machine, as the entire chassis is flexing around you. You feel every camber change and every change in grip surface interacting with your body immediately.

You want pure racing? You want karting.

I love kart racing. It’s the most addicting hobby you can be involved in. I’ve made some great friends, and challenged myself in ways that I never thought possible. I suggest that anyone who can get involved with karting do so. However there is one thing that I will warn you about, if you decide to go down this rabbit hole.

Getting up at 5am sucks. There is no way around this.

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It’s always getting up at some crazy-o-clock time to travel to some far off track, so by 9 am we can be doing laps. Once I get up it’s fine, but that urge to hit the Snooze Button in the morning  can makes the first five minutes the hardest battle of the day. After about fifteen minutes of arguing with my alarm clock, I always struggle to take a shower and get on the road for another practice day.

However, once you get to the track, it’s all worth it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpGpAJDROCs&w=656&h=407]

Through the year, I’m going to write up a series of articles for Build/Race/Party about what I think karting is like. I’ve written some articles about karting in the past, but with the start of another season, I figured it was a good time to start doing a longer series.

I’ll share all of the elements I can think of to get more people excited about joining this awesome sport. Karting is actually more accessible than people realize, especially as a grassroots motorsport. If you know how to get started, you can find yourself on the track much more quickly than you ever thought possible.

We’ll see how this all goes. #theartofkart

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Author’s Note: Davin Sturdivant (@relaxeddriver on Twitter) has over eight years of racing experience as a Solo II autocrosser and a competition kart racer. As more articles appear on Build/Race/Party, you can also read more race-craft improvement articles in more detail at his personal blog, StartingGrid.org.