This is crazy - I've done a fair bit of karting and even won a league championship several years ago, but I've honestly never considered leaning in vs. leaning out. I'm fairly quick, so I'd like to think that I've been leaning out without thinking about, but even if that's the case, it's never been deliberate. What you're suggesting makes so much sense. Now I can't wait to get back to the track to test it out! Thanks for posting this!!
Thanks for your feedback! Regarding leaning out, there is no need to exaggerate it. Simply go with the natural force which always pushes you away from the corner.
@@kartingtips I'm still a little confused. Can you help? If you're "leaning in" wouldn't that weight make the inside tyres spin slower, making it turn faster, since the outside tyres are spinning faster. Or perhaps, that is true, but it's still a slower technique due to other reasons. The biggest one I can think of is reduced traction. But you'd think you would have higher traction with the "leaning in" method. Maybe it's a case of like having a deflated tyre.... yes there's greater surface area, hence traction, but it might be about a balance of traction/Goldilocks zone. For instance, "too much traction" = "frictional forces" = "less efficiency" = "less speed" = "slower laptime". Would that make sense? I feel like that's where you were heading with this concept. If we take that above hypothesis as correct, then we can think about how to optimise traction. I'm wondering if you can get EVEN FASTER laptimes by "leaning back" during turns. You may want to shift the weight to the back tyres, so that the front tyres can turn more effectively. Go karts only have the front two wheels that can turn, the rear ones can merely slide. There's no fancy Four-Wheel Steering like we see with the Nissan GT-R and other sports cars.
advice from a guy driving in world championship, lean inside if there is too much grip to avoid the kart to bump, lean outside if the track is slippery to add more grip, sometimes you have to lean inside at the entry to slide the kart in, and once you exit you lean outside to create better traction. it really depends on the track, the kart, the situation. But most of the time, world class kart driver i compete against lean inside or straight, because in big world championship, there is so much grip on the ideal line that you have to lean inside otherwise the kart jump like crazy because of the grip, when you lean outside you can almost break your ribs because of the insane grip, it happened to me. so you mostly lean inside in big championship.
Helpful. Although in rental karts especially with the tyres used the grip is mininal. And youll often lose time sliding but its good advice especially to ne carefuk of the ribs.
@@Le_equitabliste no even in rental, in big competition the grip can become very big, so big that you can roll over the kart in some track ( i drive all over europe in indoor and outdoor i have driven in more than 70+ track with rental and 2 stroke competition) some track have no grip, but some track are grippy as hell, i remember a world championship where it was so hot, that the tyre melted to the track and we had to cut the rubber with knifes because the tyre was melted with the ground and it was rental karting..the grip was crazy that day. if you drive outdoor, usually the older the ground is the lighter grey it will look and the more slippery the track will be and the more likely you will have to slide in rental kart to be fast, in reverse, a new ground concrete ground, will be darker almost black and you tend to have more grip and you will have to drive clean with no slide to be fast. also, the less temperature you have ( in winter ) the more you will have to slide, and the cleaner you will have to be in summer. same for humidity, the more humid the more slide, the more dry less slide and more clean.
Great comment, the video is good but its only situational. Every kart is different even when you have the same rental cars, every track is different, you have different weather and temparature and its something you have to reassess every time. And yeah you can break rips by just leaning outside, i broke 3 on 2 different occasions, at least they are more robust now lol
@@benistingray6097 yes it can even vary from the qualifying to the race, and situation can change during a 10 minute race too, good driver has to adapt lap after lap, yes for the ribs it strenghten with the time, have also lots of elbows tendinities when i compete too much
I will try this technique next time I'm at the track! I'm quick but I'm also a heavier driver so shifting my weight is key to being fast. After watching this I realized I've been thinking about my weight shifting all wrong and definitely lean in a lot more than I should. I'm eager to work on this now and see how I improve, thank you!
The kart is still flat but more weight on the outside wheel gives it more traction most kart racers do it so subtle it’s hard to see the lean makes an incredible difference took 2 second at my local track leaning out
I'd suggest NOT learning bad driving habits that help crappy rental karts handle better. Get yourself a proper real racing kart, learn to set it up correctly, then you won't be doing silly stuff like leaning the wrong way while driving.
@@KrustyKlown I think you should absolutely do everything that will make you faster right there and right now. It is crucial skill if you want to be a competitive driver. If your rig demands to lean whatever, you absolutely should. Otherwise you will always blame your rig, weather, opponents, your mom, for you beating slow.
Great vid, really quite a counter intuitive concept, but as soon as you explained the lack of a diff it made sense! You taught an old man with a reasonable amount of mechanical knowledge (but very limited karting experience) something new, thank you!
Depending on the situation, lean out or neutral in my case. Human DRS is common in my class, so I'm all for it! It's effective as heck! It also helps when two competitors team up to create a bigger DRS to catch up to the lead and begin to compete once the ones in the lead have been "taken down".
i hadn’t Karted for like a decade, but beat all the other company reps, being the oldest nearing retirement it was a great feeling beating all the young bucks now I have some great tips to go even faster at this years meeting.
I can't wait to get back on the track. I leaned totally wrong the whole time. I was aware how weight transfers work in a car but never knew how to influence them in a kart
This is gold! Never thought of that! More in depth analyses like this and the channel will be above 100k before the end of the year! And then the 1M mark will be around the corner!
I really appreciate your feedback! It's these types of comments which make me even more motivated to make better videos for you guys! Stay tuned for this weekend's upload :)
Its the voice that just makes this a great video. Its really great to see your detailed explanations. Also great you have a perfect track to really apply these techniques.
I've just finished my very first season in rentals (4 race days, 8 races total) with improving overal my best time by 3 seconds and average lap time by 2 seconds, and was trying this techinque but I keep forgetting about it when you are fighting for a position, so next what I'm going to do is rental kart practice with sharpening my overal technique will try to proof myself this theory on practice to feel it with my own bum. Thank you for sharing this in such a straightforward way! great job! More sharing = more fast drivers out there = more fast drivers = more competition = more competition = more precise we become as drivers!
I dont know why but somany people say that when taking a corner that you should lean to the inside, but I already knew if you do that you just get less grip and you work against the natural force. I told my father thta if you lean to the outside you not just only gain a little extra grip to your tires at the outside but you dont work against the force that is actually kinda usefull. Found youre vid and its pretty good. Keep up the content!
Girated lift with a break pedal gradual release for fast right turn escapes (go-kart chairs are more central than the frame. So if you can put more pressure on that outside corner, you've effectivly created more downforce. One of the few times I come somewhat out of my chair I tend not to try it on left turn exits, since you want to have good throttle control too on exit. So you can only do it if you can manage your breaking prior to the release.
Living in a town with an extremely competitive go-karting scene this was very informative and a weirdly surprising recommendation from YT seeing as I've looked nothing up about this subject but never the less this is a great video, cheers 👍
Fantastic video, I knew about how lack of differential hampers turning ability (i.e. if both tires were directly powered that kart will mostly go straight), but never thought about lifting weight from the inner side. The quick jabs vs constant turning was mind blowing :O Subbed.
0:25 It is worth to mention that it is not gravity that pushes you to the outside. Instead it is the centrifugal force. When being leaned outside though, it is the gravitational force which adds extra pressure to the outer tyres by redistributing the drivers weight, which for reasons not known to me allows the kart to go faster through corners.
It'll be the fact that it's countering the understeer on the inside tires by taking weight off of them, so you're effectively taking a wider line while keeping the cart in the same place :). Imagine the inside and outside tires are like 2 motorbikes, the outside ones are taking a shallower curve so weighting them over the inside ones means more speedy speed.
More pressure to the outer tyres means more traction, and more acceleration for that outer tyre. So what happens? Let's think a bit. The outside tyres will travel more distance than the inside tyres due to having more acceleration, so the car will have a tendency to turn inwards, aka getting centripetal acceleration. With this, and assuming no major grip losses, it is possible to carry more momentum throughout the corner than without the centripetal acceleration, hence having more speed. Hopefully that helps. Edit: I should probably include that since karts generally have lock differentials, having same/similar grip level for the inward and outward tyres is not desirable at cornering since the kart will want to straighten out from having similar acceleration from the inward and outward tyres. The excessive wheelspin for the inwards tyres will also lessen the tyre lifespan
I don't even cart, but i enjoy driving and riding, and this was interesting to learn. My 92 Corolla was very easy to pick up the inside rear wheel around turns. That was always fun.
I was racing a lot in an amateur league of rental karts, and i just learnt the lean out technique naturally. It's just like you said, its all about the flow. Plus you really feel the steering wheel doing it, it's just natural! Also the "Human DRS" hahhahha, that was another thing that came out naturally after several races. Good ol' times before the pandemic... Now i'm to fat to race again, and also I moved to another country. Great tips, I wish I had these videos back then, I could save a lot of time!
I think I naturally found the best technique, I always wondered in or out until I’ve seen this video today which explains the science behind it, so I just adapted to each corner be it a corner where I needed a slight understeer to get a perfect next corner entry or a sharper turn where I needed to lift the inside rear. Thank you very much for your video! Easy science, but as long as you’ve never heard it, it always seems shady.
Im really a beginner when it comes to racing IRL (outside of a PC sim), but the track in a town I live in is in a multi level parking building, and its really slow with really sharp corners, but also a kinda powerful karts. The result is that leaning out makes you very likely to hit a barrier at least with your arm, while leaning in in the wrong moment may also do the same. The result is that I mostly do not lean until I pass the apex, and then I naturally lean out which helps with nice exit speed (which I really need, since Im heavier than all of my friends who I kart with).
In mower racing we used to do both. The seats were pretty flat so we welded “grab handles” to the fenders. This would let you scoot off the seat into the bar and then you would lean into the corner to avoid tipping.
A video about karting in the rain would be cool. I rarely drive in these conditions but I'm curious how you should drive in the rain, leaning is pretty important when the track is wet! Oh and human DRS is really cool, it works very well in outdoor karting!
Great idea! If only it rained in Qatar 😂 I'll be doing a tour of tracks in the UK so I guess I'll have a better chance then. Let me know if you have any track recommendations!
@@kartingtips Well I'm not from the UK but I'm sure you won't have a problem finding and choosing tracks, motorsport it s really big there as you already know and there are loads of tracks that youtubers and people in general go to quite often. So pretty much the more "famous" tracks would be nice to see a type of presentation and if it doesn't rain there's no problem, enjoy the hopefully nice weather and I'm sure that at one point you ll get to experience rain too ;)
@@kartingtips rye house is my local track and is great! I also reccomend the daytona tracks, while ive never been on them, am planning to soon and look great. Not to mention the karts are rapid! If your ever looking for indoor karting, teamsport is the way to go in the UK. Great, short tracks and quite fun (until somebody thinks they are in a bumper car)
@@MrALPHAHOWL I'm about to move to the UK so I've found your comment quite interesting, thanks! Also Club100 seems to be elite but more expensive. I'll keep on looking for tracks, leagues and teams 😊
wow. I've been delibrately leaning in all my life as that's what the guy working at the track told me many years ago and I never questioned it. will definitely be trying this next time.
For most corners and situations I totally agree. On a few occasions, I found it better to lean forward and into the corner to create maximum traction on the front tires. This is the case on very sharp and slow corners and wright after braking. The second the go-kart pulls you, you need to lay back to add weight to the rear tire.
This. In some occasions, you'd like a bit more understeer. That's only in the corners where you feel oversteer is the first "danger" of the corner. This can happen in smaller tracks. Where traction is the limit, I guess leaning back/into the corner helps. I never took too seriously the lean out techique because in the indoor track where I go, they're mostly hairpins. So you get into the corners with the brake, mostly. But I have to try the lean out in some corners, I didn't think about the difference in oversteer/understeer being the reason of doing so.
interesting take on this. Never thought about how much something as simple as leaning could make such a difference! Mind you i dont do kart racing, but i like racing in general and always good to have some knowledge handy if ever the chance appears. I was expecting a bit more of a longer conclusion as you mentioned some differences between leaning in and out with mixed results. Clearly there is time to be gained by know when you should apply one or the other.
I’m no professional but usually am one of the fastest on most of the hobby tracks, I never knew about this, I’m going to be even faster now, this is gold!
This has been an interesting area for me lately, as I've been able to do much better with the lean out method. It has made me wonder how cars work as there is no way to lean in a car to have much of an affect or effect on whatever the word is, on traction
Had this discussion years ago when I was regularly driving on a local karttrack with some friends. After some thoughts and experimentation we came to the same conclusion: Leaning out is the shit - it's faster and "easier" (you don't have to fight G-forces so much, just "go with the flow") - but it's a bit counterintuitive, people just tend to lean into curves naturally.
Great tips for a beginner snr karter here, ive alwags struggled to get that inner wheel jacking up and this will be a big part of it having tried many sets ups. Keep the tips coming
Technically is the centripetal force that pulls the kart towards the centre of the corner. A centrifugal force is a pseudo force that doesn’t really exist and describes the feeling the driver gets when they resist the pull. Look up the difference on a physics site.
@@lozy497 I recall the difference being drilled into us in Physics many years ago at school. This is a quote from LiveScience: The main difference between centripetal and centrifugal forces is that the centripetal force is the force pointing towards the center of a circle that keeps an object moving in a circular path, while the centrifugal force is the sensation that an object feels when it moves in that circular path, with that sensation seeming to push it away from the center of a circle.
I don't "lean" out, but I stay relaxed in the kart and let it naturally shift my weight to the outside, keeping my head centered and looking through the corner at all times. Needless to say, I'm the fastest karter in the world! Good video.. this should fix motorcycle guys' horrid techniques!
I never leaned in any direction; I just assumed that it wouldn't make a difference because the kart is heavy compared to the driver. Now, I learned something :)
Ngl, i used to lean in. Feels like "leaning out" is counter intuitive, but you've proven me the opposite. Ima try this out in my next session. Also i wanna try to lean back / forward in straight and brakings Thank you 🙂
I heard Ryan Norberg say that great drivers don’t do this because it is incredibly hard to accurately judge how much to lean for each corner and that it usually just upsets the balance of the kart. Is that a club karting thing that doesn’t apply to rentals? What are you thoughts? Also, love the content, I learn so much from these videos.
Great question! Leaning is more applicable for rental karts. In race karts like Ryan drives, they are so much faster and you don’t need to lean as the forces against your body are higher. Thank you for your support 🙌
Great video! Just one correction: Gravity dont push your body to the outside when cornering. Earth's gravity only pulls you downwards. The centrifugal force that happens when you are doing a corner dont have nothing to do with gravity. If you do a corner in a zero G environment, you will still feel the centrifugal force.
Very helpful information, Next time i go back to my normal karting place i'll deffinetly try this out, im currently 6th or 7th on best lap times in 270cc i'll try and improve with this strategy, thanks!
Felt counterintuitive because I was thinking of side car racing where they lean heavily into the turn. But if you think of American dirt track oval racing they deliberately setup the car to get lift on the inside front tire. You want the outside rear to give you drive and outside front to countersteer.
I understand physics but the actual wording is irrelevant, she proved her point and demonstrated it so as no in depth intellectual knowledge of physics was needed. Great video post. Thanx :-) 🙏👍
I am going on a work trip to Andretti Indoor Karting in Chandler AZ and want to be number one! I am very new to karting any tips you may have for me please!
Really interesting video. I’ve always naturally leaned heavily to the inside from the waist up with my hips/ butt pressed into the outside corner of the seat. I also sit quite hunkered down with the shoulders and head more forward. With this style I seem to gain time on people in fast sweeping corners and into hard braking zones. Tighter and more off camber corners seem to be weaker for me, so I’ll see if I can adjust a little based on what you’ve shown in this video.
This video is only applicable to rental karting, I guess. I've done several years of karting, winning german championships in endurance and from what I can say and as well spectate among the other top of the grid drivers. The best body movement is, no movement at all. Rental Karts are often a mess when it comes to their setup, tire pressure all over the place, steering rods made out of plastic and so on. Racing Karts are in perspective engineered wonders and very delicate, you can set everything up to the drivers liking and with different rear axle hardness, caster settings and track with you are able to achieve the lifting of the rear inner tyre easily. Anyway, your video is still very good, only improvement would be to make the demo lap into sectors, then showing time difference since we're in motorsports and want to see numbers :)
What tends to be a better eating position? The seat all the way forward or back or somewhere in the middle? Some local kart guy told me to try to always be as far forward as possible.
for long curves where you may be able to double apex, do you think leaning out for the first half, then hitting the apex, then leaning in for the latter half would be good? i think this makes sense intuitively
I did a lot of Slalom karting in the past so you have a lot of ultra tight turns and Standing Starts. I Always have been one of the biggest and heaviest Guys in my class so i Had to BE even better to compete with the top guys that weighed 20-30 kg less. I did by using a lot of lean Out in Kombination with overbraking the rear a Lot to Take the Moment um through the Corner. In Standing Starts a Kind of hopping was helpful to keep the rears slightly slipping for longer and keep the kart in a Higher rpm Band for better Power Delivery. In Addition to that we had very short Stop zones so it helped to use a Kind of human Aero Brake while leaning to the Back for better traction in the rears and steer fast from Side to Side.
I feel like many overlook some facts about how tires are load sensitive and how the tires actually create forces and torque around the center of gravity of the car to make it rotate. First, the load sensitivity; this says that the more you load a tire the grip you have but in a digressive way, so by doubling your load on the tire you actually dont double your grip but somewhat less, while you lose a lot of grip on the inside because you unload it, so the sum of all the grip is lower when you have more load shift. The torque that makes the kart rotate is created by the front tires lateral force around the center of gravity of the car with the moment arm that is the distance between the center of gravity and the contact patch of the front tires (in the horizontal plane), but also counteracted by the torque of the rear tires since they are behind the center of gravity. And when you shift your load back and forth you linearly increase the moment arms depending on the direction of leaning but due to tire sensitivity you dont linearly increase the grip on the tire.
I’ve only been karting a few times but a personal preference I figured out was that I like my seat further back so that my weight is towards the back of the kart. The leaning is something I will have to try though.
The reason why leaning on the outside of the kart increases grip and presses the shoulder of the outside tyres into the ground. Leaning over the front inside wheel in the wet done correctly can help with turn in. So actually both can work in different circumstances
I'm a fast karting driver but i've totally never thought about leaning out or leaning in, i'd just drive fast, i'll definitely try this next time i'm going karting!
@@kartingtips I will! I should note that I normally try to keep my body perpendicular to the track, so i may get a bit faster lap times, the video was pretty good at explaining the method and it will improve my driving surely.
Ive been doing it wrong all this time, im bigger and heavier than most of my friends so i need to try this next time and see if this helps. I usually lose on the straighta though.
Damn, I just learned how to go faster, and I was never slow, but now i might catch up with the faster people, awesome stuff to know, it makes so much sense now, let go!!!!!
thanks for this! im a bit heavier so i notice a bit of a difference the way my body is placed. i fooled around with leaning back and forth to shift weight but never side to side. im about to cook for sure
In racing karts on dirt ovals for a long time, I would lean in or out to counteract if the kart was getting loose or tight. I could tell a difference in the handling, but every time I've mentioned that in a video comment here on RUclips, I got told by 20 year olds who've raced karts for 30 years that it was the stupidest thing they've heard. Sort of nice to see proof that it actually does make a difference.
Hey 👋 Just met you at TeamSport Warrington today, you gave me a card. I was already watching your videos. Great vids, really enjoy them. Get to Preston do the electric karts, if you want a race with my boy Jake, give us a shout. he’s the current lap record holder. Take care 🏎🏆
When turning the outside front wheel will be above the track because of how the kart is made, so if you lean out you can make the tire get in contact with the track and gain traction
I can see the benefit of this technique with no differential, and putting weight to the outside wheel to allow more traction in and out of corners, compared to the inside wheel that is technically spinning more and have a wheel hop affect or “push” the car forward through the corner. Though, if these carts had an open differential in the rear, would leaning on the inside be more beneficial? I would like to say yes, but I’m curious what others think.
I heard it was something to do with the increased friction of a tire with extra pressure on it. But the explanation of unloading the inside tire so the straight axle is not fighting itself is a good one too. Karts also have a suspension, it is the compliance of the chassis. Maybe getting the chassis in a 'set' to the outside takes up all the compliance and makes the handling more predictable?
Leaning makes less difference for transferring weight to the outside tire than does a stiff outside arm. Put another way, if turning right, press on the wheel firmly with your left arm and it will help lift the inside rear. I karted for years, won the SW US IKF championship in 125 shifters, taught for a summer at Bonduraunt's Kart school. Old dudes lean out because they have weak necks, young dudes lean in because they are eager. Be neutral. If you don't believe me, go watch the skusa supernats and see how many in the pro/master shifter races are leaning in vs out.
I use leaning in due to the weight distribution while cornering I learned that it was a good tecnique to keep the weight inside while taking a corner I will try this one to see the difference
You lose so much by leaning in. Those who recommend that doesn't know what they are talking about. When leaning out in a kart you lift the inside rear tire off the tarmac and creating more rotational force in the kart making it turning better with less steering input and less input means less drag on the front tires which ultimately means higher exit speed. Your steering position also greatly improves if you are driving with a 8 to 4 hand position. You are fighting the laws of physics when leaning in and trying by fighting what the kart wants to do. I always told out customers that leaning in is like a child walking a great Dane seeing a rabbit and runs off, the dog is walking the boy so to speak but leaning out is hulk walking a chihuahua it's him walking the dog.
Hey is this the same in a senior rotax kart ? I seen many people at my local club who have done this for many years and are still leaning in ? I am going to start practice with the lean out method
Stay tuned for the 2023 Lusail Karting Track Guide which will be uploaded on Wednesday! In the meantime, check out the 2022 Track Guide :) ruclips.net/video/gfOKpWFCqsE/видео.html
I tried the 'lean out' method on my motorbike, it didn't work out too well!
oh god...
haha amazing
LOL well you're missing 2 tires for that move!!
skill issue
i dont want to break the fun but there is something similiar to lean out when using bike which is counter lean when your bike lean sharper than you
This is crazy - I've done a fair bit of karting and even won a league championship several years ago, but I've honestly never considered leaning in vs. leaning out. I'm fairly quick, so I'd like to think that I've been leaning out without thinking about, but even if that's the case, it's never been deliberate. What you're suggesting makes so much sense. Now I can't wait to get back to the track to test it out! Thanks for posting this!!
Thanks for your feedback! Regarding leaning out, there is no need to exaggerate it. Simply go with the natural force which always pushes you away from the corner.
I always exaggerated the leaning in the rain (both, outer front and back tyres). Helped me a lot with grip and reducing the impact on curbs.
Im karting at my local on monday night turning up early to get this test session in because I know I lean in on a couple corners
Everyone is slow around you then 😅
@@kartingtips I'm still a little confused. Can you help?
If you're "leaning in" wouldn't that weight make the inside tyres spin slower, making it turn faster, since the outside tyres are spinning faster.
Or perhaps, that is true, but it's still a slower technique due to other reasons. The biggest one I can think of is reduced traction. But you'd think you would have higher traction with the "leaning in" method. Maybe it's a case of like having a deflated tyre.... yes there's greater surface area, hence traction, but it might be about a balance of traction/Goldilocks zone. For instance, "too much traction" = "frictional forces" = "less efficiency" = "less speed" = "slower laptime". Would that make sense? I feel like that's where you were heading with this concept.
If we take that above hypothesis as correct, then we can think about how to optimise traction. I'm wondering if you can get EVEN FASTER laptimes by "leaning back" during turns. You may want to shift the weight to the back tyres, so that the front tyres can turn more effectively. Go karts only have the front two wheels that can turn, the rear ones can merely slide. There's no fancy Four-Wheel Steering like we see with the Nissan GT-R and other sports cars.
advice from a guy driving in world championship, lean inside if there is too much grip to avoid the kart to bump, lean outside if the track is slippery to add more grip, sometimes you have to lean inside at the entry to slide the kart in, and once you exit you lean outside to create better traction. it really depends on the track, the kart, the situation. But most of the time, world class kart driver i compete against lean inside or straight, because in big world championship, there is so much grip on the ideal line that you have to lean inside otherwise the kart jump like crazy because of the grip, when you lean outside you can almost break your ribs because of the insane grip, it happened to me. so you mostly lean inside in big championship.
Helpful. Although in rental karts especially with the tyres used the grip is mininal. And youll often lose time sliding but its good advice especially to ne carefuk of the ribs.
@@Le_equitabliste no even in rental, in big competition the grip can become very big, so big that you can roll over the kart in some track ( i drive all over europe in indoor and outdoor i have driven in more than 70+ track with rental and 2 stroke competition) some track have no grip, but some track are grippy as hell, i remember a world championship where it was so hot, that the tyre melted to the track and we had to cut the rubber with knifes because the tyre was melted with the ground and it was rental karting..the grip was crazy that day. if you drive outdoor, usually the older the ground is the lighter grey it will look and the more slippery the track will be and the more likely you will have to slide in rental kart to be fast, in reverse, a new ground concrete ground, will be darker almost black and you tend to have more grip and you will have to drive clean with no slide to be fast. also, the less temperature you have ( in winter ) the more you will have to slide, and the cleaner you will have to be in summer. same for humidity, the more humid the more slide, the more dry less slide and more clean.
Great comment, the video is good but its only situational. Every kart is different even when you have the same rental cars, every track is different, you have different weather and temparature and its something you have to reassess every time.
And yeah you can break rips by just leaning outside, i broke 3 on 2 different occasions, at least they are more robust now lol
@@benistingray6097 yes it can even vary from the qualifying to the race, and situation can change during a 10 minute race too, good driver has to adapt lap after lap, yes for the ribs it strenghten with the time, have also lots of elbows tendinities when i compete too much
Thanks!
I will try this technique next time I'm at the track! I'm quick but I'm also a heavier driver so shifting my weight is key to being fast. After watching this I realized I've been thinking about my weight shifting all wrong and definitely lean in a lot more than I should. I'm eager to work on this now and see how I improve, thank you!
Same! I just assumed you’d want a flat kart rather than pushing one side of the kart. Such an oversight!
The kart is still flat but more weight on the outside wheel gives it more traction most kart racers do it so subtle it’s hard to see the lean makes an incredible difference took 2 second at my local track leaning out
Same! Years doing it wrong 😂
I'd suggest NOT learning bad driving habits that help crappy rental karts handle better. Get yourself a proper real racing kart, learn to set it up correctly, then you won't be doing silly stuff like leaning the wrong way while driving.
@@KrustyKlown I think you should absolutely do everything that will make you faster right there and right now. It is crucial skill if you want to be a competitive driver. If your rig demands to lean whatever, you absolutely should. Otherwise you will always blame your rig, weather, opponents, your mom, for you beating slow.
Great vid, really quite a counter intuitive concept, but as soon as you explained the lack of a diff it made sense! You taught an old man with a reasonable amount of mechanical knowledge (but very limited karting experience) something new, thank you!
Thanks just tried it yesterday and helped me corner faster than everyone else. Did not know this was that effective. Will credit you in my video.
Amazing! Glad the technique helped you 🙌
Depends if a guy is next to me and I need to shove him I'll lean to the inside so the understeer will smoothly push him aside😊
😂
Big brain techniques
You! Bloody!!
So you’re a dirty racer then?
You can also keep in contact with someone’s bumper entering into a corner and push them through and wide out the exit. 😉😎
Depending on the situation, lean out or neutral in my case. Human DRS is common in my class, so I'm all for it! It's effective as heck! It also helps when two competitors team up to create a bigger DRS to catch up to the lead and begin to compete once the ones in the lead have been "taken down".
i hadn’t Karted for like a decade, but beat all the other company reps, being the oldest nearing retirement it was a great feeling beating all the young bucks now I have some great tips to go even faster at this years meeting.
I can't wait to get back on the track. I leaned totally wrong the whole time. I was aware how weight transfers work in a car but never knew how to influence them in a kart
This is gold! Never thought of that! More in depth analyses like this and the channel will be above 100k before the end of the year! And then the 1M mark will be around the corner!
I really appreciate your feedback! It's these types of comments which make me even more motivated to make better videos for you guys! Stay tuned for this weekend's upload :)
Its the voice that just makes this a great video. Its really great to see your detailed explanations. Also great you have a perfect track to really apply these techniques.
Thank you for your feedback!
I've just finished my very first season in rentals (4 race days, 8 races total) with improving overal my best time by 3 seconds and average lap time by 2 seconds, and was trying this techinque but I keep forgetting about it when you are fighting for a position, so next what I'm going to do is rental kart practice with sharpening my overal technique will try to proof myself this theory on practice to feel it with my own bum. Thank you for sharing this in such a straightforward way! great job! More sharing = more fast drivers out there = more fast drivers = more competition = more competition = more precise we become as drivers!
Brother i took all of your tips and i won 100$ on bet with my friend. He was always winning so he doesnt expect i can win, this is crazy thank you :D
That's awesome! Well done dude!
I dont know why but somany people say that when taking a corner that you should lean to the inside, but I already knew if you do that you just get less grip and you work against the natural force. I told my father thta if you lean to the outside you not just only gain a little extra grip to your tires at the outside but you dont work against the force that is actually kinda usefull. Found youre vid and its pretty good. Keep up the content!
This confirmed a suspicion I've had for a while! Thanks for this awesome and thorough analysis
Girated lift with a break pedal gradual release for fast right turn escapes (go-kart chairs are more central than the frame. So if you can put more pressure on that outside corner, you've effectivly created more downforce. One of the few times I come somewhat out of my chair I tend not to try it on left turn exits, since you want to have good throttle control too on exit. So you can only do it if you can manage your breaking prior to the release.
Living in a town with an extremely competitive go-karting scene this was very informative and a weirdly surprising recommendation from YT seeing as I've looked nothing up about this subject but never the less this is a great video, cheers 👍
Thank you for your feedback!
Fantastic video, I knew about how lack of differential hampers turning ability (i.e. if both tires were directly powered that kart will mostly go straight), but never thought about lifting weight from the inner side. The quick jabs vs constant turning was mind blowing :O
Subbed.
Thank you for your feedback :)
0:25 It is worth to mention that it is not gravity that pushes you to the outside. Instead it is the centrifugal force. When being leaned outside though, it is the gravitational force which adds extra pressure to the outer tyres by redistributing the drivers weight, which for reasons not known to me allows the kart to go faster through corners.
It'll be the fact that it's countering the understeer on the inside tires by taking weight off of them, so you're effectively taking a wider line while keeping the cart in the same place :). Imagine the inside and outside tires are like 2 motorbikes, the outside ones are taking a shallower curve so weighting them over the inside ones means more speedy speed.
Centripetal force*
More pressure to the outer tyres means more traction, and more acceleration for that outer tyre.
So what happens? Let's think a bit. The outside tyres will travel more distance than the inside tyres due to having more acceleration, so the car will have a tendency to turn inwards, aka getting centripetal acceleration. With this, and assuming no major grip losses, it is possible to carry more momentum throughout the corner than without the centripetal acceleration, hence having more speed.
Hopefully that helps.
Edit: I should probably include that since karts generally have lock differentials, having same/similar grip level for the inward and outward tyres is not desirable at cornering since the kart will want to straighten out from having similar acceleration from the inward and outward tyres. The excessive wheelspin for the inwards tyres will also lessen the tyre lifespan
I don't even cart, but i enjoy driving and riding, and this was interesting to learn.
My 92 Corolla was very easy to pick up the inside rear wheel around turns. That was always fun.
I was racing a lot in an amateur league of rental karts, and i just learnt the lean out technique naturally. It's just like you said, its all about the flow. Plus you really feel the steering wheel doing it, it's just natural! Also the "Human DRS" hahhahha, that was another thing that came out naturally after several races. Good ol' times before the pandemic... Now i'm to fat to race again, and also I moved to another country. Great tips, I wish I had these videos back then, I could save a lot of time!
this helped a lot because i lean into the corner and now i know why im not going as fast as i can. this helped a lot
I think I naturally found the best technique, I always wondered in or out until I’ve seen this video today which explains the science behind it, so I just adapted to each corner be it a corner where I needed a slight understeer to get a perfect next corner entry or a sharper turn where I needed to lift the inside rear.
Thank you very much for your video! Easy science, but as long as you’ve never heard it, it always seems shady.
And 100% for human DRS, I started with 2 strokes race bikes and I’m tall asf so this is a second nature to try hide for Cx !
Im really a beginner when it comes to racing IRL (outside of a PC sim), but the track in a town I live in is in a multi level parking building, and its really slow with really sharp corners, but also a kinda powerful karts. The result is that leaning out makes you very likely to hit a barrier at least with your arm, while leaning in in the wrong moment may also do the same. The result is that I mostly do not lean until I pass the apex, and then I naturally lean out which helps with nice exit speed (which I really need, since Im heavier than all of my friends who I kart with).
In mower racing we used to do both. The seats were pretty flat so we welded “grab handles” to the fenders. This would let you scoot off the seat into the bar and then you would lean into the corner to avoid tipping.
A video about karting in the rain would be cool. I rarely drive in these conditions but I'm curious how you should drive in the rain, leaning is pretty important when the track is wet! Oh and human DRS is really cool, it works very well in outdoor karting!
Great idea! If only it rained in Qatar 😂
I'll be doing a tour of tracks in the UK so I guess I'll have a better chance then. Let me know if you have any track recommendations!
@@kartingtips Well I'm not from the UK but I'm sure you won't have a problem finding and choosing tracks, motorsport it s really big there as you already know and there are loads of tracks that youtubers and people in general go to quite often. So pretty much the more "famous" tracks would be nice to see a type of presentation and if it doesn't rain there's no problem, enjoy the hopefully nice weather and I'm sure that at one point you ll get to experience rain too ;)
KTips has a short video called 'The wet line in go karting'
You might find that useful although it is short.
@@kartingtips rye house is my local track and is great! I also reccomend the daytona tracks, while ive never been on them, am planning to soon and look great. Not to mention the karts are rapid! If your ever looking for indoor karting, teamsport is the way to go in the UK. Great, short tracks and quite fun (until somebody thinks they are in a bumper car)
@@MrALPHAHOWL I'm about to move to the UK so I've found your comment quite interesting, thanks! Also Club100 seems to be elite but more expensive. I'll keep on looking for tracks, leagues and teams 😊
wow. I've been delibrately leaning in all my life as that's what the guy working at the track told me many years ago and I never questioned it. will definitely be trying this next time.
Let me know how it goes!
What a great series. Just one helpful comment: Breaking means you are destroying the machinery, Braking means you are slowing the kart
Coming from cycling/motorbikes I assumed leaning in to the apex gave the inside wheels more grip but I should try this.
For most corners and situations I totally agree.
On a few occasions, I found it better to lean forward and into the corner to create maximum traction on the front tires.
This is the case on very sharp and slow corners and wright after braking. The second the go-kart pulls you, you need to lay back to add weight to the rear tire.
This. In some occasions, you'd like a bit more understeer. That's only in the corners where you feel oversteer is the first "danger" of the corner. This can happen in smaller tracks. Where traction is the limit, I guess leaning back/into the corner helps. I never took too seriously the lean out techique because in the indoor track where I go, they're mostly hairpins. So you get into the corners with the brake, mostly. But I have to try the lean out in some corners, I didn't think about the difference in oversteer/understeer being the reason of doing so.
interesting take on this. Never thought about how much something as simple as leaning could make such a difference! Mind you i dont do kart racing, but i like racing in general and always good to have some knowledge handy if ever the chance appears.
I was expecting a bit more of a longer conclusion as you mentioned some differences between leaning in and out with mixed results. Clearly there is time to be gained by know when you should apply one or the other.
I’m no professional but usually am one of the fastest on most of the hobby tracks, I never knew about this, I’m going to be even faster now, this is gold!
This has been an interesting area for me lately, as I've been able to do much better with the lean out method. It has made me wonder how cars work as there is no way to lean in a car to have much of an affect or effect on whatever the word is, on traction
Had this discussion years ago when I was regularly driving on a local karttrack with some friends.
After some thoughts and experimentation we came to the same conclusion: Leaning out is the shit - it's faster and "easier" (you don't have to fight G-forces so much, just "go with the flow") - but it's a bit counterintuitive, people just tend to lean into curves naturally.
Great tips for a beginner snr karter here, ive alwags struggled to get that inner wheel jacking up and this will be a big part of it having tried many sets ups.
Keep the tips coming
Great video!! Just one physics related mistake, in 0:24 it's not gravity what pushes you to the outside, it's inertia (or centrifugal force).
THATS GRAVITY STUPID
Technically is the centripetal force that pulls the kart towards the centre of the corner. A centrifugal force is a pseudo force that doesn’t really exist and describes the feeling the driver gets when they resist the pull. Look up the difference on a physics site.
@@Tailspin80 From a non intertial reference frame is the centrifugal force, from an inertial reference frame is inertia
@@lozy497 I recall the difference being drilled into us in Physics many years ago at school. This is a quote from LiveScience:
The main difference between centripetal and centrifugal forces is that the centripetal force is the force pointing towards the center of a circle that keeps an object moving in a circular path, while the centrifugal force is the sensation that an object feels when it moves in that circular path, with that sensation seeming to push it away from the center of a circle.
I don't "lean" out, but I stay relaxed in the kart and let it naturally shift my weight to the outside, keeping my head centered and looking through the corner at all times. Needless to say, I'm the fastest karter in the world!
Good video.. this should fix motorcycle guys' horrid techniques!
It’s my birthday and I’m going karting. This will really help. Thanks❤
I never leaned in any direction; I just assumed that it wouldn't make a difference because the kart is heavy compared to the driver. Now, I learned something :)
Ngl, i used to lean in. Feels like "leaning out" is counter intuitive, but you've proven me the opposite. Ima try this out in my next session. Also i wanna try to lean back / forward in straight and brakings
Thank you 🙂
I heard Ryan Norberg say that great drivers don’t do this because it is incredibly hard to accurately judge how much to lean for each corner and that it usually just upsets the balance of the kart. Is that a club karting thing that doesn’t apply to rentals? What are you thoughts? Also, love the content, I learn so much from these videos.
Great question! Leaning is more applicable for rental karts. In race karts like Ryan drives, they are so much faster and you don’t need to lean as the forces against your body are higher.
Thank you for your support 🙌
@@kartingtips Thank you!!
Great video!
Just one correction: Gravity dont push your body to the outside when cornering. Earth's gravity only pulls you downwards. The centrifugal force that happens when you are doing a corner dont have nothing to do with gravity. If you do a corner in a zero G environment, you will still feel the centrifugal force.
Very helpful information, Next time i go back to my normal karting place i'll deffinetly try this out, im currently 6th or 7th on best lap times in 270cc i'll try and improve with this strategy, thanks!
Thank you for your feedback! Let me know how it goes!
Felt counterintuitive because I was thinking of side car racing where they lean heavily into the turn. But if you think of American dirt track oval racing they deliberately setup the car to get lift on the inside front tire. You want the outside rear to give you drive and outside front to countersteer.
i never noticed my leaning technique. but i think this will help me a lot today when i go karting the first time after 4 and 1/2 months
It's not gravity that pushes you to the outside, but centrifugal force, which is a result of the car's inertia.
Centrifugal force is a pseudo force, it just describes the relation between inertia and centripetal force from a rotating reference frame
@@tophmyster glad both of these comments were left
* your inertia
I understand physics but the actual wording is irrelevant, she proved her point and demonstrated it so as no in depth intellectual knowledge of physics was needed. Great video post. Thanx :-) 🙏👍
This is so counterintuitive. Great insight!
Perfect! Such a good video style. short and informative. Perfect!
Thank you for your feedback!
Great vid. Very informative, I will definitely try this out next time I go karting. You earned another sub.
I am going on a work trip to Andretti Indoor Karting in Chandler AZ and want to be number one! I am very new to karting any tips you may have for me please!
Looking forward to trying this! Thank you
Gentleman, a short view back to the past... xD
Really interesting video.
I’ve always naturally leaned heavily to the inside from the waist up with my hips/ butt pressed into the outside corner of the seat.
I also sit quite hunkered down with the shoulders and head more forward.
With this style I seem to gain time on people in fast sweeping corners and into hard braking zones.
Tighter and more off camber corners seem to be weaker for me, so I’ll see if I can adjust a little based on what you’ve shown in this video.
Thanks for your feedback! Let me know how it goes 😃
Waaay dude! 😱 Your channel is a gem 💎
I do this all the time when I play Mario GoKart
Never thought of leaning out. I’ve been leaning in all the time and didn’t notice my technique was wrong!
I never thought about that, great tip!
About the human DRS, since I'm quite tall, I always do it.
I’m just starting out, only 4 sessions in but I guess I’m gonna be leaning out 🙏👍
Great point I’d never considered. Thanks.
My follow up question is; what about leaning forwards and out?
This video has been super enlightening! Thanks mate 👍🏾 😊
This video is only applicable to rental karting, I guess.
I've done several years of karting, winning german championships in endurance and from what I can say and as well spectate among the other top of the grid drivers.
The best body movement is, no movement at all.
Rental Karts are often a mess when it comes to their setup, tire pressure all over the place, steering rods made out of plastic and so on.
Racing Karts are in perspective engineered wonders and very delicate, you can set everything up to the drivers liking and with different rear axle hardness, caster settings and track with you are able to achieve the lifting of the rear inner tyre easily.
Anyway, your video is still very good, only improvement would be to make the demo lap into sectors, then showing time difference since we're in motorsports and want to see numbers :)
Thanks for the advice, never realised it makes that big of a difference
That man passed the Dr's exam, he passed the guard, he can pass anything but a USADA test.
Awesome man I used do a lot of indoor Karting and once on a 80cc kart. I never thought about I wanna go to kart place and try this out lol awesome
What tends to be a better eating position? The seat all the way forward or back or somewhere in the middle? Some local kart guy told me to try to always be as far forward as possible.
Great video KTips!
This is one of those videos that makes you smarter every day 🤠
I appreciate your feedback!
Defenitely trying this on my next time out on track!
Let me know how it goes!
for long curves where you may be able to double apex, do you think leaning out for the first half, then hitting the apex, then leaning in for the latter half would be good? i think this makes sense intuitively
I did a lot of Slalom karting in the past so you have a lot of ultra tight turns and Standing Starts. I Always have been one of the biggest and heaviest Guys in my class so i Had to BE even better to compete with the top guys that weighed 20-30 kg less. I did by using a lot of lean Out in Kombination with overbraking the rear a Lot to Take the Moment um through the Corner. In Standing Starts a Kind of hopping was helpful to keep the rears slightly slipping for longer and keep the kart in a Higher rpm Band for better Power Delivery. In Addition to that we had very short Stop zones so it helped to use a Kind of human Aero Brake while leaning to the Back for better traction in the rears and steer fast from Side to Side.
Great stuff man!!!
should be illegal to be this good at explaining
Does the 'human DRS' work for indoor karting too or is it just outdoor, like against wind resistance etc?
I feel like many overlook some facts about how tires are load sensitive and how the tires actually create forces and torque around the center of gravity of the car to make it rotate.
First, the load sensitivity; this says that the more you load a tire the grip you have but in a digressive way, so by doubling your load on the tire you actually dont double your grip but somewhat less, while you lose a lot of grip on the inside because you unload it, so the sum of all the grip is lower when you have more load shift.
The torque that makes the kart rotate is created by the front tires lateral force around the center of gravity of the car with the moment arm that is the distance between the center of gravity and the contact patch of the front tires (in the horizontal plane), but also counteracted by the torque of the rear tires since they are behind the center of gravity. And when you shift your load back and forth you linearly increase the moment arms depending on the direction of leaning but due to tire sensitivity you dont linearly increase the grip on the tire.
I’ve only been karting a few times but a personal preference I figured out was that I like my seat further back so that my weight is towards the back of the kart. The leaning is something I will have to try though.
The reason why leaning on the outside of the kart increases grip and presses the shoulder of the outside tyres into the ground. Leaning over the front inside wheel in the wet done correctly can help with turn in. So actually both can work in different circumstances
can't wait to hit the track. Thank you!
I'm a fast karting driver but i've totally never thought about leaning out or leaning in, i'd just drive fast, i'll definitely try this next time i'm going karting!
Let me know how it goes!
@@kartingtips I will! I should note that I normally try to keep my body perpendicular to the track, so i may get a bit faster lap times, the video was pretty good at explaining the method and it will improve my driving surely.
@@Md915 Hi! No results yet?
@@8511a no, i haven't gone karting yet but i'll let you both know when i do!
@@Md915 Any karting since? 😀
Nice input about the no differential in go karts
I was 3 sec. faster then everybody on the track. Love the tips Thank you.
Superb, well done 🙌
Ive been doing it wrong all this time, im bigger and heavier than most of my friends so i need to try this next time and see if this helps. I usually lose on the straighta though.
I have never go-karted. I'm not really that fussed by it ... but what a great video!
I guess I'm a fan now?
The information with no differential i know but i forget, i leave in, but by the next drive i will test it.
Thx
Damn, I just learned how to go faster, and I was never slow, but now i might catch up with the faster people, awesome stuff to know, it makes so much sense now, let go!!!!!
Thank you for your feedback! Let me know how it goes in your next race 😃
thanks for this! im a bit heavier so i notice a bit of a difference the way my body is placed. i fooled around with leaning back and forth to shift weight but never side to side. im about to cook for sure
Thanks for the tips brother. I wish you will be F1 driver one day.
In my dreams! Karting is our version of F1 bro 😀
Also when cornering the outer tyres are more involved. So by shifting weight to the outer tyres, they get more grip and the kart can turn harder.
In racing karts on dirt ovals for a long time, I would lean in or out to counteract if the kart was getting loose or tight. I could tell a difference in the handling, but every time I've mentioned that in a video comment here on RUclips, I got told by 20 year olds who've raced karts for 30 years that it was the stupidest thing they've heard. Sort of nice to see proof that it actually does make a difference.
Is the trade off of the lean out gain > more wear on the tires?
Hey 👋
Just met you at TeamSport Warrington today, you gave me a card. I was already watching your videos.
Great vids, really enjoy them.
Get to Preston do the electric karts, if you want a race with my boy Jake, give us a shout. he’s the current lap record holder.
Take care 🏎🏆
When turning the outside front wheel will be above the track because of how the kart is made, so if you lean out you can make the tire get in contact with the track and gain traction
I can see the benefit of this technique with no differential, and putting weight to the outside wheel to allow more traction in and out of corners, compared to the inside wheel that is technically spinning more and have a wheel hop affect or “push” the car forward through the corner. Though, if these carts had an open differential in the rear, would leaning on the inside be more beneficial? I would like to say yes, but I’m curious what others think.
I heard it was something to do with the increased friction of a tire with extra pressure on it. But the explanation of unloading the inside tire so the straight axle is not fighting itself is a good one too.
Karts also have a suspension, it is the compliance of the chassis. Maybe getting the chassis in a 'set' to the outside takes up all the compliance and makes the handling more predictable?
Leaning makes less difference for transferring weight to the outside tire than does a stiff outside arm. Put another way, if turning right, press on the wheel firmly with your left arm and it will help lift the inside rear.
I karted for years, won the SW US IKF championship in 125 shifters, taught for a summer at Bonduraunt's Kart school. Old dudes lean out because they have weak necks, young dudes lean in because they are eager. Be neutral.
If you don't believe me, go watch the skusa supernats and see how many in the pro/master shifter races are leaning in vs out.
I use leaning in due to the weight distribution while cornering
I learned that it was a good tecnique to keep the weight inside while taking a corner
I will try this one to see the difference
You lose so much by leaning in. Those who recommend that doesn't know what they are talking about.
When leaning out in a kart you lift the inside rear tire off the tarmac and creating more rotational force in the kart making it turning better with less steering input and less input means less drag on the front tires which ultimately means higher exit speed. Your steering position also greatly improves if you are driving with a 8 to 4 hand position.
You are fighting the laws of physics when leaning in and trying by fighting what the kart wants to do.
I always told out customers that leaning in is like a child walking a great Dane seeing a rabbit and runs off, the dog is walking the boy so to speak but leaning out is hulk walking a chihuahua it's him walking the dog.
This is gonna be a game changer when i get back into a kart
I'm pretty sure it will help you when cornering. Let me know how it goes!
Hey is this the same in a senior rotax kart ? I seen many people at my local club who have done this for many years and are still leaning in ? I am going to start practice with the lean out method
Will be sure to try this in my next session
Let me know how it goes!
Thank you so much for the information. Can you do a full racing line on Lusail karting track. I race casually there with my friends.
Stay tuned for the 2023 Lusail Karting Track Guide which will be uploaded on Wednesday!
In the meantime, check out the 2022 Track Guide :)
ruclips.net/video/gfOKpWFCqsE/видео.html