Well, you admit stagger is a major component, and I never said that my stagger calculations were written in stone. There are many components to a racetrack that affect stagger. Turn radius is one major one. The ratio of the turn radius to the length of the straightaway is another. With a tight radius and a very long straight, you're going to have to make compromises.
I have this feeling that, once you have found a working stagger for your track, you're pretty much set. I can't see how it would be a handling tool. Once the stagger is set, if you not handling, I've got to believe that you're going to need to look elsewhere for solutions.
It sometimes amazes me how much people will go through in accomplishing various tasks that are necessary on a kart. Treating tires, cutting tires, scaling karts, and a host of other things, yet they don't have the time to walk across the infield of the kart track to find out what the radius of the turn is!! They will spent untold amounts of money on various gadgets, but they won't buy an air density gauge?? They won't buy precision jets, let alone jets that have been flow test it. I don't know how many people do it, but I hear there are people that drill the jets. Fuel is about 700 times denser than air, the slightest flaw in a jet hole can cause major disruptions in fuel flow, yet nobody addresses that, at least it's not a common practice. And where did people get the idea that the temperature under a spark plug is a major contributor to performance?? One of the first things I learned when I got into karting was the benefits of an EGT. It was from an article by Bystrom, in karter news, and I think my first or second issue of Karter News (1966). Unfortunately the gauges of the day were not conducive to Sprint kart racing. And they were crude. They were mostly for enduro racing. You had to strap the gauge on your stomach with a belt. Seems like every time I stuck a Mac I would think about that article. That was 50 years ago, and though I forgot many of the details, I retain the essence. When I built my first dyno in 1985, the EGT was an integral part of it. I proved, at least to myself, how important the EGT is.
I am a firm believer in the EGT, I don't care how much trouble it is, if you don't have one, you're not going as fast as you could in all conditions. People will laugh, but I have data, in my head, that proves to me that the EGT is essential for going fast under all conditions.
And of course there are going to be people who will say "when was the last time you raced LTO", as if this had something to do with it. lol the status quo is so hard to change. If you're serious about racing and winning, although driving is very important, tuning is close behind.