Karting bumper penalties are done – how to deal with being loaded off

Drivers have sussed out how to use bumpers to hit other karts without getting drop-down penalties.

Teams have figured out how to make bumpers so soft, and clamps so tight, that drivers can hit drivers almost with impunity.

So, as a driver playing by the rules, how do you deal with it?

How teams are working around bumper penalties

As soon as drop-down bumpers were introduced, people started to work on how to avoid the penalties. From heating up the clamps and letting them cool and contract on the kart, to being as blatant as using superglue on the mounts!

Here's what they get up to:

• Warm the bumpers up in the sun so that they are softer and don't impart so much force in the sliding mount. If there’s no sun, use the space heater in the tent.

• Find ways to let air escape from the bumper. The seams of the bumper can be opened up and the sticker kit will hide that. Then, when they hit a kart, the bumper is much softer, crushes easily and is much less likely to push the slider in.

• If your scrutineers don't check for innocently created holes underneath the bumper, or deliberately created holes, then it’s open for exploitation. You're going to be on the receiving end of contact driving without fear of a drop-down.

It is not at all uncommon to see mechanics violently working the bumper – they bend the bumper at the narrow point and push it against the front wheel to soften it up. That's not something anyone bothers to hide. That is standard practice.

How drivers work their way around drop down bumpers – loading

The main problem with fixed bumpers was that, over time, drivers worked out that they could load a train of karts, and exactly like the office toy, a driver in 5th on the start grid could send the driver on pole off the track. That driver did not contact the pole driver, and therefore is very hard to blame!

However, it became standard practice. Karting starts became total mayhem where everybody had to push the kart in front, or be smashed off the track. This crisis necessitated the invention of the drop-down bumper.

But now, drivers – with the help of workarounds that make the bumper penalty harder to activate – loading at the starts has made a return, and drivers are getting away with it.

What they do is quite straightforward. Rather than smashing into your nice squidgy plastic rear bumper, they gently attach themselves and push you. If you are right on the bumper of the driver ahead, you don't go flying off, attracting the attention of any officials. But you involuntarily start pushing the driver ahead of you.

If that driver is right on the driver ahead, then the chain of pushing continues.

• Best-case scenario is that only one of these drivers gets sent.

• Worst-case is that all of the drivers get sent, and the one driver doing the initial pushing is able to read the situation and get past everyone.

This happens all the time now and rarely creates a bumper penalty.

What does create a bumper penalty is the innocent drivers getting into a crash, and they get fired off – and a bumper penalty just to add insult to injury.

At the moment, bumper penalties, by my biased observations, are penalising innocent drivers more than the guilty ones. Drop-down bumpers are great for detecting accidental contact, almost entirely ineffective at detecting deliberate contact.

• Deliberate contact is planned, done carefully by loading, and therefore the skilled driver is able to get it right.

• Accidental contact is a surprise and results in the kind of impact that pushes the bumper in – this is where we are.

What can you do when being loaded off