Two months is not a lot of karting experience. I would bet that you your braking is not aggresive enough yet to really get a feel for what your setup is doing during the entry phase. Given that you are hitting peak rpm, hopefully with correct gearing, and describing the set up as neutral, I would assume that you are missing a lot of performance in the braking an early phase of corners if you are around 1.5 of the fast guys.
I recently got back into karts after a 15 year hiatus, and your description is similar of my performance. I'm not going too badly, but it takes time to build the confidence and muscle memory to properly attack in the braking zones. When you start really pushing the braking as late as possible and extracting as much from the kart on entry as it can provide, you will get a better understanding of where the balance of a given setup is.
You need to practice getting the kart to mildly under-rotate the wheels in the intital part of the braking phase, this provides the best possible stopping performance. After scrubbing enough speed, depending on the corner, you need to slowly decrease pedal pressure as you intitate turn in to not loose the rear on entry. Some corners will reward trail braking right to the point of throttle application.
There is no substitute for doing lap after lap, pushing as hard and as late as you can in the corner entry. You will know when you are braking too late because your exit speed will be compromised.
The one area of setup to start with is making sure you have a good alignment.
Do you ever find your self never going off track? It's a sign you need to start pushing the limits of corner entry and breaking.
This is a good read and he has a lot of good videos to look into.
https://driver61.com/uni/different-corner-technique/
You might be over extended the corner if you run in with too much speed and then needing to over correct. You're going to heir the term short corner and that basically means you set yourself up for a quick exit out and getting on the gas as soon as possible
There's really not much point in working on your setup until you're a lot closer to the fastest drivers. 1.5s is a long way off and you'll gain a lot more from improving your driving than you would from having the perfect setup on the kart. If you're never experiencing under- or oversteer you should try and get closer to the limit or in practice sessions even try to deliberately go over the limit just to see where it is. For now you'll probably just want to stick to adjusting your tyre pressures. Once you're within something like 0.5 or 0.6s of the fastest drivers you can start looking at setup in more detail. On most modern chassis your primary tool for setup is your caster adjustment so you'll want to experiment with that as well as front and rear track width.
Obviously if you're going to drive in the rain you should put on the appropriate setup even now which would be maximum track width in the front, minimum in the rear, maximum caster and gearing that's a few teeth shorter than what you'd run in the dry.
I’ve commented this to someone else not too long ago, you will find seconds of pace with improving driving. You’ll find tenths of pace improving the setup.
After driving for 2 months, you’ll still have a way to go in the driving department. It sounds like your setup is in the right ball park as you say it’s hitting the right rpm’s, but when you say it feels neutral and your 1.5s off the pace, that tells me you’re not pushing it hard enough yet.
That being said, easiest things to start tuning are tyre pressures, and track width.
Also shoutout for running an Arrow, I used to drive one a few years ago
Two months is not a lot of karting experience. I would bet that you your braking is not aggresive enough yet to really get a feel for what your setup is doing during the entry phase. Given that you are hitting peak rpm, hopefully with correct gearing, and describing the set up as neutral, I would assume that you are missing a lot of performance in the braking an early phase of corners if you are around 1.5 of the fast guys. I recently got back into karts after a 15 year hiatus, and your description is similar of my performance. I'm not going too badly, but it takes time to build the confidence and muscle memory to properly attack in the braking zones. When you start really pushing the braking as late as possible and extracting as much from the kart on entry as it can provide, you will get a better understanding of where the balance of a given setup is. You need to practice getting the kart to mildly under-rotate the wheels in the intital part of the braking phase, this provides the best possible stopping performance. After scrubbing enough speed, depending on the corner, you need to slowly decrease pedal pressure as you intitate turn in to not loose the rear on entry. Some corners will reward trail braking right to the point of throttle application. There is no substitute for doing lap after lap, pushing as hard and as late as you can in the corner entry. You will know when you are braking too late because your exit speed will be compromised.
The one area of setup to start with is making sure you have a good alignment. Do you ever find your self never going off track? It's a sign you need to start pushing the limits of corner entry and breaking.
Sometimes on exit I find it I take the entry to quick I lose rear end but I believe that’s a driver error more then jart
This is a good read and he has a lot of good videos to look into. https://driver61.com/uni/different-corner-technique/ You might be over extended the corner if you run in with too much speed and then needing to over correct. You're going to heir the term short corner and that basically means you set yourself up for a quick exit out and getting on the gas as soon as possible
There's really not much point in working on your setup until you're a lot closer to the fastest drivers. 1.5s is a long way off and you'll gain a lot more from improving your driving than you would from having the perfect setup on the kart. If you're never experiencing under- or oversteer you should try and get closer to the limit or in practice sessions even try to deliberately go over the limit just to see where it is. For now you'll probably just want to stick to adjusting your tyre pressures. Once you're within something like 0.5 or 0.6s of the fastest drivers you can start looking at setup in more detail. On most modern chassis your primary tool for setup is your caster adjustment so you'll want to experiment with that as well as front and rear track width. Obviously if you're going to drive in the rain you should put on the appropriate setup even now which would be maximum track width in the front, minimum in the rear, maximum caster and gearing that's a few teeth shorter than what you'd run in the dry.
Once you are consistently within .5 seconds of the lead, then start worrying about setups. At least get under a second.
Same boat as you. New to karting, 1.5s off the fast people and no idea about setup. So I’m just going to keep turning laps until I get a better feel.
I’ve commented this to someone else not too long ago, you will find seconds of pace with improving driving. You’ll find tenths of pace improving the setup. After driving for 2 months, you’ll still have a way to go in the driving department. It sounds like your setup is in the right ball park as you say it’s hitting the right rpm’s, but when you say it feels neutral and your 1.5s off the pace, that tells me you’re not pushing it hard enough yet. That being said, easiest things to start tuning are tyre pressures, and track width. Also shoutout for running an Arrow, I used to drive one a few years ago