Hi all,
I recently had a view some footage from a guy that was driving behind me but could see me and my inputs in front.
It was said that I seem to crank a lot of lock in low speed/hairpins and not need to. I am struggling to find a way to counter that.
What would people advise to try to stop over rotating the Kart? Or slow my hands/arms down haha. I wouldn’t say I am aggressive with the control just use a lot of them.
Thanks,
Nick
This is me. 100%
One thing I tried that seemed to work is to tell myself to “Prost it”. For me that meant minimum exertion/input and just generally chill out. In my case I had to do this so I wouldn’t tire out during races.
Sunday driver style? 
I used to tie zip ties to the top of the steering wheel, with the stalks pointing up like feelers. The exercise was to have the zip ties move as little as possible when I steered while still making the corner.
The easiest thing I do when drivers are cranking the wheel too much is advise them to move their hands up on the steering wheel. It gives you less leverage on the wheel and physically keeps your hands smoother. It also forces you to drive more with your shoulders, which inherently make smaller inputs than your biceps or forearms.
Somewhere around 10-2 or 11-1 if you’re really choppy. It’ll feel weird but it’s worth trying for a few sessions. If I feel like I’m driving sloppily or too aggressively, I’ll move my hands up in the middle of a race even. Boom, instant smoothness.
OK, move hands up. Does how far you stretch your arms matter? Is there a rule of thumb there? I read that half way along your forearm is good?
Something I try with younger drivers is to change the ackerman. Rather than having them move their hands, I will decrease ackerman so the steering is slower. That way the kart responds less to their shaking of the wheel, and eventually they tend to calm their hands down.
That’s interesting, because I found the opposite effect for me to be true.
If my hands are on the top of the wheel, then my steering gets more choppy, because of where I had the leverage. If I moved hands to the bottom of the steering, they smoothed out more because I didn’t need to steer as much.
I guess the high position is another one of those “things to try to see if it works for you”.
When I think of holding the wheel high, I think of Jean Alesi, he was a BAMF for ripping on that thing.
For that reason I’ve never tried it myself.
I am at the track tonight so will try my arms more stretched out and in a 10 2 position.