Karting Stars

Part 1 of…

Karting shoes: do you really need them to go kart racing?

Aside from go-karts, like the concession ones that you rent with your friends and family just to have fun at amusement parks, kart racing is a highly competitive sport, growing fast both outdoors and, especially in recent years, indoors. It’s so serious that it can be dangerous, if taken too light-heartedly.

Still, some wear them just because they think they look cool in proper, big brand name, colorful karting shoes!

Some are made by very well known brands of the fashion industry, and only inspired by karting and racing. That’s cool, but they are not real kart racing shoes.

Anyway, they probably give confidence a boost to those that need it whether or not they are technically good, but they really won’t make you and your kart go any faster!

In reality, Karting shoes should be worn for other important reasons:
As protection to the feet and the ankles if and when a driver gets thrown out of the kart and risks hitting hard objects or getting hit by other karts racing on the track and coming up from behind or simply sliding on the track, particularly in open karts. Outdoor kart tracks can offer a lot of grip and therefore be very abrasive, and that’s not what you want when you’re sliding on your back after being ejected without adequate protection to abrasion.

Karting shoes are specifically designed to protect the karters’ anklebones, feet and some cover the lower part of the legs. These have a high ankle to shield the rear of the foot and the lower leg from impacts and abrasion in case of sliding out of the kart and on the track. That is a rare incident, but it does happen and open karts, like the road course sprint karts with open and unprotected wheels, are designed without seat belts to allow the driver to detach from the kart in case of a bad accident. A simple wheel-over-wheel type of contact can throw a kart and its driver high up in the air, with the driver facing a possible very long slide on the tarmac if it happened at high speed.
With these extensive protections, it’s probably more appropriate to call them karting boots rather than karting shoes, but the latter term is more frequently used in the sport.
To make the exterior layers of the shoes, protective abrasion resisting materials are used, like durable ballistic nylon and other hard and plastic guards, secured to the outside of the shoe in the more critical and vulnerable spots.

To be continued…