How to LEAN in Karting (tutorial)

I like to lean against a bar

Would love to see this mechanic added into KartKraft somehow. Maybe just with headtracking?

If you want to lean into the turn you can adjust the seat all the way forward. This will put more weight on the front wheels and minimize understeer. It will make things more predictable and consistent than the sudden snaps you get leaning back and hitting braking bumps.

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.

Thanks for the pro tips Lord Frieza

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

I aleays thought kart breakes worked on the front wheels. My mind is blown now

Leaning out means that your butt is on the outside or your head is on the outside?

At my local track there is one corner that is more stable when you lean in

Great tips. Btw the only lean work for me in Grand Turismo is forward "human drs". The other lean wont work.

I always use human drs at my kart track and it helps

Lean out could help in grip on the outside wheels. But it all depends on the track.

Damn I wish I knew this when I still worked at my local karting track. The owner's son always mentioned leaning but never explained the correct way (probably didn't want anyone faster than him)

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.

Great video, congrats!

I was driving a prius and tested this out.... The results showed there is in fact no way to make a stock prius faster

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.

Used to lean in until I got tired and just gave up naturally leaned out then wondered how I got faster even though I felt off point. Now I know!

Do you not get more traction if you lean back when acelerating?

I tried leaning in the last couple karting sessions and it literally gained me like 1-2 seconds per lap

Good to know!

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 :)

i did not even know this is a thing. thanks for the advice <3

Cant wait to try

Leaning in vs out doesn't matter as much in rental chassis as the chassis tubing is much thicker and stiffer and doesn't flex as well. If anything, leaning out is beneficial solely because it keeps you stable and doesn't strain you fighting the G forces, so your endurance is better and you don't fatigue during longer races. It can, however, be helpful to toss your weight to the outside at corner entry to overcome the tendency for rental karts to understeer as they're setup for lower skilled drivers that would spin out constantly with a CIK kart setup.

The difference is much more pronounced in a proper CIK chassis. It's almost undrivable if leaning in but handles like a dream if leaning out, but they are much softer and more flexible so that's why, not to mention the tires are much grippier and will fight much more if the kart stays "flat".

Wow, nice! Counter intuitive

Makes a ton of sense why leaning out would be faster. It's effectively like how inertia moves the weight of a car to the outside forcing the outside to the ground, increasing traction, and improving cornering speed. Same for why taking kerbs is so effective. You'd think by removing the inside tires from contact to the ground would decrease traction, but you're further moving the weight of the car to the outside tire. For karting, by leaning outwards, you're effectively working as an active weight jacker like what IndyCar uses that drivers adjust to help manage understeer. At especially ovals, as the tires wear out throughout a stint and understeer increases, they'll adjust the weight jacker to be further to the outside to help mitigate the understeer.

Where is this track? By the way, good explanation! 😉

Mechanic:
DRS not working, is malfunctioning.

We are in go Kart ☠️

Great video, i learned this from the anime Capeta

I’m racing in a few days I’ll try this as well as human DRS

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!

Great video mate

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 🏎🏆

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

The extreme application of the lean out is on wet condition, you really feel the differences... especially on slick tyres !

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.

acctualy leaning could be a huge risk me as a experianced racer i dont recomend leaning

I do this all the time when I play Mario GoKart

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.

I am SO glad gravity does not pull sideways.. 😂🤣🤣🤣🤣

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

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 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

can't wait to hit the track. Thank you!

should be illegal to be this good at explaining

Body should be leaned out, but head should be leaned in. Else it hurts your neck

As a non-initiate i was leaning inside thinking it was obviously better

But i'll try leaning outside next time

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 :)