pdqneon
New Reader
2/6/24 2:07 p.m.
As time goes on, or maybe due to an accident, some of us lose the ability to drive in competition events like we use to. I wonder if Grassroots Motorsports has ever done research into what devices could be added to a car to allow somebody in this situation to be able to compete again. I found a company called Kempf (https://kempf-usa.com/Handcontrols_description.html) that offers solutions.
Here's the link to a GTR with the setup (https://kempf-usa.com/Kempf_videos.html#video-and-stats-23)
It would be interesting for Grassroots Motorsports to do an article on this. I wonder how competitive a driver could be using such a solution. I'm sure there would be a learning curve, but I would think with some practice, it might just work.
Back when I was a driving school instructor, I had a student who had hand controls installed in their vehicle and needed to learn to drive. The hand controls could do anything the pedals could, so I don't see why they wouldn't also work for racing.
It could be much harder - ie if the driver cannot use pedals then one hand is throttle and brake and only one hand to steer (basically opposite of all DE advice)- but I don't see why not possible!
Also, didn't someone make a monster truck with a dirt bike yoke because they wanted it to be hand controls only? That's pretty extreme but shows what's possible.
Nice piece on Alex Zanardi's IMSA BMW from 2019.
Here's some info on the monster truck with handlebar controls:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220819141604/http://monsterphoto.iwarp.com/monjerky.htm
Pro drift car with hand controls:
I recall autoxing years ago with a pretty quick driver who happened to be paraplegic and ran a C4 ZR1 Corvette. In addition to the 'usual' gas/brake lever, there were 1st gear and 2nd gear buttons on the steering wheel. It basically had a mechanism that held the shifter in the 1-2 gate and actuated it fore/aft depending which button was pushed... I don't recall how the clutch was integrated into that though. It was a pretty awesome setup.
More recently, I've been contemplating ideas for how one could build an affordable DIY hand-clutch mechanism for conventional manual tranmission cars.
