Don't Be Late For Kurch
A Sunday Ritual Begins...
Kimi and I quickly adhered to the Sunday morning ritual of getting to our home track in Torrance one a week. This became known as “Kurch.”
I became a serious student of kart craft. I took a thorough tour of KartTube (shout-out K Tips!). Kimi was generous with advice and tolerated me picking his brain endlessly. He was also game to watch me fantastically fuck up and learn lessons the hard way.
There were a few key philosophies he bestowed upon me.
“There are no bad days on the track.”
You can have a rough, tough or shitty day, but a day at the track is always a good day.
“Fast is in front of you.”
This one is pretty simple. Eyes forward, fuck the drama.
In those days Kimi was completely devoted to his line, made it easy to copy him. I was getting down from low 30s laps and cracking into 29s territory. I was eager to get into the 28s club. In order to do that, I had to attack the track on a granular level. I couldn’t keep leaning on Kimi’s line. We’re two very different drivers. First lesson Kurch taught me: find your own damn line.
The home track is incredibly technical. Off the bat I knew I had to tackle the twin pins. One is tricky enough, back to back, I had a lot of work to do.
I dedicated whole months to those pins. This is where I learned Kurch lesson number two: adapt to the kart, not the other way around. You can’t fight a fucky kart through the pins. You gotta come to an agreement and you may not like it.
After grueling months of consistently running low 29s laps, that 28.7 hit like a breath of fresh air. Finally, I was in the 28s club and now I was feeling ambitious. At this point I could sketch the back of Kimi’s stupid helmet from memory. It was time to change that shit up.