3 Tips For Kart Racing

Here are three tips to help out your go-kart racing. So the first tip we're going to be looking at is our posature in the kart. We want to have a slight bend in our arms. We want to keep our back relatively straight. If you notice you're crouched over, it's going to change the balance of the kart. And if you're leaning too far back, that's going to put too much weight on the rear of the chassis. So just think, get yourself in the kart, push yourself in the seat ever so slightly so your arms are slightly bent. Some of the typical examples of a bad posture might be when you're leaning over. If you've got a massive bend in your arm, there's more chances of turning the wheel around the corner. This means you’re not as smooth, and more mistakes can be made.

If you're leaning too far back and your arms are locked in, and you have an oversteering moment, there's not a lot of control because your arms are already locked in. That slight bend allows you to balance out the steering wheel.

The second tip we're going to be looking at for Go-karting tips is where to hold our hands on the steering wheel. There are different places that you can hold your hands on the wheel. I would recommend a nine and a three hand position. This is going to give you the most control. Now, especially if you're experiencing under steer or over steer where you're catching the kart, this gives you the best opportunity to be able to balance out your steering and control the kart. We see some bad habits where kids hold their hands in two different positions. The problem is when you've got your hands off center, you're going to pull the steering wheel with too much aggression on that dominant hand.

When you're holding your hands too high on the steering wheel, you've got a lot less opportunity to turn the steering. It might make your steering input smoother, but if you do need to turn the steering wheel and create more lock, it's going to be difficult. If you hold your hands too low, very similar to up top, we've only got a limited chance of turning the steering wheel if you need more steering lock.

If you're not quite comfortable there, lowering it first because that way you can push yourself more in the seat and that can still have nice control of the kart.

Our third tip is about smooth steering inputs. We've heard it so many times before. Smooth is fast. How do we become a smooth driver? Now, when we're looking at our steering, we want to have slow movements. If we turn the steering wheel too much too quickly, we're going to be correcting the go-kart. And if the parents are watching your son or daughter on the track, if we start to see all this correction around the corner, that's going to change the balance of the kart.

Obviously if the balance is not there, the grip's not there, and our speed isn't there either. When we're turning a corner, you want to do most of the steering with your inside hand. If we're turning a right hand corner, we want to do most of the turning with this right hand. And the left hand is more of a guide, and I like to use a bit of a pull and a push method. So as you're pulling down on one, you're pushing into the steering with the outside arm. The inside arms got a nice v bend, outside arm is relatively straight.

We might find a more aggressive steering input is in the wet weather conditions. In the wet, there's a lot less grip on the track. If you do turn gently and smooth, you don't have the grip to get around the corner. I like turn the wheel full lock because as we know, we're going to have a lot more under steer. So we are pulling down on the steering wheel to create more steering in the kart. The extra steering acts as a brake for the go-kart. The more we turn the steering wheel, the more it's starting to slow down. So as I said before, if you start to turn the wheel too much or too consistently around the corners, that is hundredths of a second that you are losing per corner.

In the high grip conditions, you might find that it gets a bit heavier in the steering. More steering lock is required, and you want to gradually turn that steering lock. The rear of the kart will slowly start to lift and corner with nice amount of grip.

That's three tips centered around your posture, your steering inputs, and being nice and smooth in the kart. I hope this information helps your kart racing next time you’re out on track. If you want to learn more about your kart racing with different techniques suited to changing conditions, be sure to check out our Champions Program where we teach drivers how to conquer all tracks and conditions.