If you imagine the line a kart takes when it passes through a hairpin. A direct drive will take a U shape and a gearboxed kart will take V. This is partly to do with front brakes. Yes front brakes increase understeer, so you approach the corner in a V shape means you turn before you brake, brake very very late, come off the brake, turn and accelerate out. It doesn't work as well in a direct drive because the mid corner speed is lower and a direct drive struggles to pick up again whereas a gearbox uses the gears to over come this.
Front hand brakes, they use them on slow corners to medium speed corners. They are not used on medium to high speed corners (where not much braking is done and steering control is more important). The only time they will approach a corner in the V shape is when overtaking when late braking becomes critical and they can block the overtaken driver mid corner and the slow mid corner speed isnt so much of a problem.
Does that answer the questions, end answer is the driving style is considerable different (and also explains why most drivers are only ever good at one of them).
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