Lean in, Lean Out - Who Cares

Hold the wheel high, low - I'm not bothered

Welcome to a free episode of Terence Dove on Racing Drivers, don’t forget to listen to the audio version because I always come up with more to say.

I like to theorise a lot on how you should sit in a kart, and how you should hold the wheel. I used to have a very fixed idea on that, namely this:

1. Hold the wheel high, 10 and 2 on the clock-face.

2. Push against the wheel and have straight arms - lock them out.

3. Lean out slightly for corners to help the axle lift

4. Push back even more under braking

I would call this the ‘strength posture’, and to be fair to myself it did really help a lot of drivers to feel a lot more in command of their kart.

BUT

It is certainly not universally better, or even demonstrably better than leaning into corners, or holding the wheel lower.

These days, I hardly even address how a driver sits in a kart and holds the wheel, because so many ways work well.

What I do now is observe how they naturally want to sit in the kart and hold the wheel, then try to help them maximise that approach.

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By the way, I did used to go hard on preaching my strength posture technique and leaning out, so I can’t really complain how there are videos talking about how you must lean out in corners - but it just doesn’t bear up to scrutiny, especially the ‘must’ part.

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There are however, a few ways you can hold the wheel and sit in a kart that can really screw things up

1. Curling your hands around the back of the steering wheel

This is something drivers rarely intend to do, but when you get a bit knackered the temptation to pull down on the steering wheel aided by your bodyweight can cause a dynamic disaster for your kart.

And one way to knock the temptation on the head, is to always drive with your palms forward, at least a bit forward, and never allow them to creep around the wheel so that you palms face you. I’ll take the most rudimentary picture for you now to make it clear.

You can hold the wheel palms forward and cause no problems

Hold the wheel palms kinda forward, that’s ok too

Not a demonstration of signals you may use to other drivers, but how not to hold a steering wheel, if you want to keep your bodyweight stable in the kart!

With your hands curled around the steering wheel, you are no longer bracing yourself against braking forces at all. In fact, your arms will be pulling you forward toward the front of the kart. This means when you brake hard, you take grip away from the rear of the kart.

Therefore you can’t brake as well, and you lose rear grip. That’s one problem but it gets worse.

As you go around the corner, if you are no longer planted in the seat, and you are pulling down on the wheel, your body will flop around, move weight all around the kart and turn the thing into an utterly unpredictable nightmare driving machine.

This isn’t down to your driving skill, or a dodgy set-up. Just how you allow your body to be thrown around by the forces of driving fast, all from something as simple as how you hold the wheel.

2. Choose your preference and stick with it

Most of this posture stuff is really about being predictable and stable. You can lean into corners, you can lean out. You can hold the wheel in different positions according to your preference.

Drivers find something clicks with particular configurations. Perhaps they feel it looks cool, or they just feel really proper. To me it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that you stick with it, do the same every lap down to the fine details so that the kart and you know what’s going to happen every single time you hit the brake, turn, apex and exit.

If you allow the kart to make your body lean out, but sometimes you lean in instead, or if you brace yourself to brake mostly but occasionally allow you weight to shift forward, you will be drastically messing with the dynamics of the kart randomly, making it impossible to hold the kart at the limit.

3. Use your method to command and synchronise with your kart

Right, commanding and synchronising with your kart sounds like two opposing pieces of advice.

That’s because it’s true. Synchronising yourself with what the kart wants is asking you to go with the flow of the kart and track, whilst commanding the kart is you not allowing the kart to drive you, and throw you around.

So I’ll clarify how you can do both.

If you are a lean-out driver, this means rounding a corner you are trying to help the kart do what it wants to do, which is lift the inside rear wheel. Now, this probably doesn’t make much difference at all, but if it feels good then do it. This puts you in-sync with your kart, you are moving with the dynamics of the kart.

But you are also commanding the kart, when you brake you hold yourself solid, rather than flopping forward. You time when you let your body lean out according to exactly when you feel its needed. You hold that particular posture solidly, disallowing the kart to move you. All your inputs are deliberate and precise.

This is being in command and flowing with the kart how you like to. All the time you should feel ‘Yeah this is the way to drive!’

Don’t let the kart throw you to the outside like you are a ragdoll. You’re moving to the outside of a corner should be subtle and controlled.

Fitness is the key to maximising every one of the styles possible - especially the ones that feel easy to start with

The high steering grip, push against the wheel strength posture thing is really so you can use your arms to help support your weight in a stable way. It is actually quite tiring for your arms.

This is why I think lots of drivers adopt a more low steering grip style, because you can relax your arms more. Your arms aren’t being used like full time load bearing cross-members, as well as having to steer the kart.

That’s nice, except that when you get quick you have to somehow keep your body in exactly the right position, i.e. not being moved around involuntarily and upsetting the kart’s dynamics, WITHOUT the help of nice straight arms.

This means you need to have even more core strength on tap, and extra triceps strength using very bent arms to keep you back in the seat.

This more relaxed looking driving styles, in the end, require more strength. That’s cool with me!

The exception - slicks in the wet

The one thing that I insist on with all the postures you can drive with is to make sure you don’t let the kart take your weight forward.

But there is an exception to keeping yourself pushed back in the seat at all times. This is when there is zero grip, where the kart simply cannot function at all.

The kart needs grip in order to rock forward onto it’s outside front wheel, in order to pop the rear inside wheel up, and release the solid axle from trying to plough forward.

But on slicks in the wet, if you find yourself forced to drive, there is often not sufficient grip to tip the kart’s weight over the front. Instead, no matter how much steering angle you apply, the kart ignores you and carries on going straight.

The solution is to throw your bodyweight over the outside front wheel when you want the kart to turn, which forces the kart to rock forward and pop the inside rear wheel up. The kart should rotate quite suddenly, at which point you sit back again and use your weight to give traction to the rear.

This isn’t always necessary in modern high grip racing classes, but if you run on hire kart tyres this can transform your lap times.

If on slicks this driver on full lock could activate the kart by leaning out and forward, over the front outside wheel

Thanks for reading

Terence