Cold weather gloves

Today I had my first races of the season in sub 0 °C weather, and it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience because my hands felt like they were going to freeze off after only 15 minutes of driving. It wasn’t a big deal during these races, as I was only in the kart for half an hour at a time. Later on in the year I’ll be driving some stints that are 1-2 hours long, so I’m looking for a solution to keep my hands nice and warm.

I knew my hands were going to get cold, so I wore three layers of gloves: latex gloves, fleece gloves and my regular karting gloves. This was definitely not enough to keep my hands warm for even a few minutes.

I know there exist heated motorcycle gloves, and Alpinestars has some thicker wet/cold weather gloves too. Does anyone have experience with these, or any other advice on how to keep your hands warm in the kart during longer periods?

Latex? As in rubber? That’s probably the worst thing you can put on your hands, latex causes sweat which then carries heat away from your hands.

I’ve not done any cold weather karting but I’ve done other things like skydiving from 12000’ at -30 C. Try to find some pure silk under gloves instead of latex, they make a huge difference without restriction of movement. Pure silk is 100% the best insulating material out there. And it feels kinda kinky :laughing::laughing:

ALASKA BEAR - Natural Silk Liner Gloves Unisex https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PIMIZWA/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_N5C09VY7FPMZXNE7ER4N

Glove liners (ski shops have all kinds of them) make a huge difference. The other thing is to have a wind barrier on the back of the gloves. No mesh/woven material to let the wind through.

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I’ve just used winter gloves and are they hard to get a good wheel grip with.

I’d think that the most important bit would be to have wind blocking as opposed to thickness.

I use these when I ride motorcycles:

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I know it was said to be the wrong thing in this thread but I’ve always had great luck with tight latex gloves underneath my racing gloves. All the difference in the world at least for me.

Each to their own I guess. I have to wear those things often for work, I can think of nothing worse to do a race with :joy:

By the time we get to October races around here, early AM practice sessions can start in the 35-40F range… my cadet hated the Alpinestar wet/cold weather gloves for some reason, and like mentioned above, regular non-driving winter gloves just didn’t have the grip on the wheel he wanted.

For our final race of the year I put hand warmers in his gloves, shoving them right down the back of his hand as far as I could get them close to his knuckles. This worked well, no complaints from him and he just got on with it.

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