I’m going to test a Kart Republic KR2 for the first time soon. Before this I have only ever driven an OTK Exprit 2022 chassis on the Vortex ROK engine. I’m doing this test to make a purchase decision between an OTK or KR chassis. I’m realatively new to owner karting, so is there anything I need to keep a look out for when testing? Like driving dynamic, setup or anything else? thank you.
A couple months back I asked for thoughts on 32Five gloves, and despite other users telling me to just get a more known brand, I decided to get them anyways lol. Also I noticed that not many people tend to write reviews on their karting equipment, so I hope this review helps others hoping to make a purchase.
*DISCLAIMER* Claude AI was used to help write this review, however all opinions remain mine and I am in no way affiliated with the 32Five brand.
I've run these gloves across a genuinely wide mix of karting: Club100 races and practice, Teamsport indoor sessions, Outdoor rental endurance and sprint races, Sodi RT10 indoor rental kart sessions, and owner-kart test days plus a full race weekend. All owner-kart sessions were driven on a Vortex ROK-engine on an OTK chassis in Indonesia. That's roughly 6 hours on rental equipment and 7.5 hours on my own OTK owner-kart, in both wet and dry conditions. This review is based on that full spread rather than a couple of track days.
Their size S fits true to size (Hand circumference: 19-20cm, Length: 8.6cm). The gloves have slightly stretched over the months of use, but nowhere near enough to dramatically change the actual fit. They still sit snug, just marginally less snug than out of the box.
Dry: Excellent. Locked-in and precise, with zero perceptible slip. Interestingly, the grip feel is noticeably better on my OTK owner-kart wheel than on rental equipment — on the owner-kart it genuinely feels like my hand is glued to the wheel, whereas on rentals it's still confidently locked in, just not quite at that same level. That suggests the grip material pairs particularly well with the rubber compound on owner kart wheels specifically, more so than with whatever rental karts are running. After 13.5 hours, grip performance hasn't changed at all — no noticeable break-in effect, good or bad.
Wet: Also excellent, and surprisingly close to dry-condition performance — never slipped off the wheel in the wet. For context all wet-weather running was done on rental karts and with Club100 karts, so I can't speak to wet grip on an OTK owner-kart wheel specifically. The gloves do absorb water, and there's a very slight drop-off in outright grip once wet, but it's marginal — the gloves themselves aren't really the limiting factor in wet conditions, so any wet grip issues are more likely down to how you hold the wheel than the gloves.
Construction-wise, the gloves have external seams everywhere — except the thumbs. On my pair, that creates a sharp bit of stitching where the right thumb meets the middle of the palm, and it rubs. It's only present on the right glove — the left has no equivalent rough spot — and that asymmetry is really the bigger story here. It points to a quality control issue rather than a deliberate design flaw: the two gloves in a pair should be built to the same standard, and mine clearly weren't. That also means this isn't necessarily representative — your pair might have this exact same rough spot, a different one somewhere else, or none at all.
Initially this was a real problem: I used to rest my thumbs on the wheel rather than curling them around it, and with that hand position the seam rubbed enough to cause blisters on my palm.
Switching to curling the thumbs around the wheel rather than resting them flat almost completely solved it — there's now just slight skin discomfort in the same spot after a decent stint, nothing more. But it's worth flagging clearly: if you naturally drive with thumbs resting flat on the wheel, this seam placement could be a genuine issue unless you get a pair without said issue.
After 13.5 hours of mixed-condition, mixed-format use: nothing has broken, and the palm grip material shows no thinning at all. The only wear so far is very minor fraying on the fingertip stitching, which actually disappeared after washing the gloves (they'd gone about 4 hours of driving without a wash at that point — worth noting for anyone judging "wear" without accounting for grime buildup). The printed graphics have also started to peel slightly, but far less than I expected for this amount of use. Overall, they still look and feel basically new.
The wrist closure design is holding up perfectly with no looseness or wear. Comfort is excellent in normal and the hot 29–36°C ambient temp conditions I dealt with through every owner-kart session in Indonesia. Hands sweat as expected in that heat, but the gloves never feel hot or uncomfortable. In the wet/cold conditions, my fingers would get cold, though not to the point of shivering, and not noticeably worse than any other non wet weather glove I've used — that may be more a personal cold/hot tolerance factor than a glove-specific issue.
13.5 hours across rental and owner-kart equipment, wet and dry, and these have held up impressively — minimal wear, consistent grip throughout, and genuinely great comfort in both heat and cold. The standout finding is that grip feel scales with wheel quality: they're excellent on rental equipment but next-level on an OTK owner-kart wheel, which is worth knowing if you're deciding between rental-only use and owner-kart racing. Durability-wise, there's nothing here that suggests these won't comfortably go well beyond 13.5 hours before needing replacement.
The one real design flaw is that thumb seam — or more precisely, the QC inconsistency that let a sharp, asymmetric seam through on one glove but not the other. It's a genuine early discomfort issue, and while it's fixable with a hand-position change, not everyone should have to adapt their driving style around a stitching inconsistency. If 32Five tightened up QC on that seam, this would be close to a perfect glove for the price point.