Why do many people think IT people don't suit physical activity?

Because the job involves a lot of sitting and little movement, and a fair number of people truly prefer mental activities over physical ones. But that is a difference in personal taste and doesn't mean the whole team avoids every form of exercise.

Does kart racing require high fitness?

It doesn't demand the fitness of contact sports. Kart racing mainly needs reflexes, the ability to read the track and staying calm through corners, skills unrelated to endurance or muscular strength.

Should kart racing be combined with another mental activity for an IT team?

It can be, for example adding a short puzzle challenge before the main race, creating a more varied pace for the whole session, which suits a team with both people who like movement and people who prefer still activities.

Team Building for IT Teams: Does Kart Racing Really Fit?

"The IT team probably won't like physical games" is a familiar line from many HR people planning team building for IT teams. The assumption is partly true, but it leads to a common mistake: ruling out every physical activity without asking whether that activity actually suits the way a technical team thinks.

In practice, many tech companies that have tried kart racing for their product development teams saw a surprisingly high participation rate, far higher than earlier team building sessions built around big-group physical games.

The difference between "dislikes exercise" and "dislikes any physical activity"

Most software engineers and technical staff don't avoid physical activity because they hate sports. They avoid activities with high randomness, unclear rules, or that easily make people who aren't good at sports feel out of place, such as football or large-group games that need complex coordination. Kart racing is different: the rules are simple, results are measured transparently by a stopwatch, and each person drives their own kart, so nobody has to depend on a teammate's skill and risk "ruining the match."

Three similarities between kart racing and engineering thinking

First, kart racing has clear inputs and outputs: press the accelerator, turn the wheel, and the result is a lap time, much like a piece of code that runs to a measurable result. Second, the track is a fixed system that can be learned and optimized lap by lap, similar to how engineers are used to debugging and gradually improving a system. Third, there is no big luck factor like dice or a draw, and results depend almost entirely on the driver's skill and concentration.

An indoor track lowers the psychological barrier

For people who have never driven at speed, a large outdoor track can create considerable psychological pressure. An indoor track, with a closed design and tightly controlled speed limits, feels safer for newcomers. A three-level indoor kart track, like the one at Vincom Thao Dien, has an extra advantage: it doesn't depend on the weather, so it suits a fixed schedule without rain upsetting the plan, an important factor when an engineering team's calendar often revolves around product releases that are hard to move.

Don't force the whole team to race at the same intensity

One mistake to avoid is forcing every member to race with the same level of seriousness. In any engineering team there are people excited by speed and people who just want a light experience. A sensible approach is to let each person choose their level of participation: a serious timed race, or just a few practice laps with no scoring, as long as nobody is left out of the group's shared activity.

Add a mental element before the main race

For teams that want to keep a little "engineering flavor" in the team building day, you can add a short challenge before the track, such as a logic puzzle or a small-group brain game, using the result to set the starting order for the kart race. This alternates mental and physical activity, which suits a team with both kinds of preferences in the same session.

The right time in the product development cycle

Engineering teams usually have schedules tied closely to releases, sprints or project deadlines. The ideal time to hold team building for IT teams is right after a major release, when the team has just been through a stressful period and needs a genuine way to unwind, rather than picking an empty day on the company calendar without considering the team's own work rhythm.

Learn to tell "dislikes exercise" from "dislikes activities without logic", instead of lumping technical teams into one stereotype. Skipping every physical activity by default is the wrong starting point when you plan team building for IT teams.