Soft vs Hard Kart Tires: Which Is Actually Faster?

By Alessio Lorandi, 2013 CIK-FIA World Champion, KF-Junior. Updated on 17 October 2026.

How come some kart tires have way more grip than others, especially in winter, when the track is freezing? Aren’t all tires supposed to have the same amount of grip?

No. Not all tires are created equal.

And the common rule says softer tires are always faster. To be honest, if I didn’t think about it, I would also say yes. But the reality is that in a few occasions they are not. In a few occasions the harder tire is the faster one.

So let me explain when, and why.

Are soft kart tires always faster than hard ones?

Most of the time, yes. In 90% of the cases or more, the softer tire is going to be quicker, across cold, mild and warm conditions. Over a single qualifying lap it’s even more. Even when a soft tire overheats at some point, you still get a peak that is higher than the harder compound.

But it’s not a law.

Think about Formula 1. At Imola in 2025 Piastri took pole and Verstappen was second on the softs. Russell qualified third, just a tenth or so from pole, on the mediums. That’s quite unusual in a final run in Q3, where you want the maximum grip available. The reason was that the Mercedes was overheating the softs badly, even over a single lap, by sector three. So the medium was simply faster for them.

At the end of the day the tire compound is a setup component.

So the useful question is which compound, on this track, at this temperature, for how many laps.

What is the real difference between soft and hard kart tires?

It’s not really about the tread. The tread is basically very similar from tire to tire, from Komet to MG to Vega to Levanto or to LeCont. The measurements and the sizes are also very similar.

What makes the difference is the compound. Some tires are softer, some are harder.

A softer compound switches on really quickly in terms of temperature. It doesn’t need a very high temperature, it has a really high friction coefficient at lower temperatures, and in most cases it also has a higher peak grip. A harder compound needs way more heat before it starts working.

And then there’s the unlucky scenario where tires from the same brand are quite different from each other. A fresher set is softer than an older one. In the wet that’s where it bites hardest. I’ve experienced it even in CIK-FIA European Championships: two sets of the same tire so far apart that one is two seconds slower than the other. When it happens there is nothing you can do.

Why would anyone race on hard tires?

Because drivers want different things. Some want ultimate performance. Others want endurance: multiple sessions at consistent lap times, instead of one crazy fast session on new tires and then a massive drop.

The amateur hobby driver who just wants to have fun doesn’t want to change tires every session. He wants two, three, four days of driving on one set. A set costs 200 to 250 euros, and it’s pretty annoying having to take them off the rims and mount them back on.

And compounds are getting harder anyway. Harder tires are cheaper over a season because you change them less often. And tires are getting more eco friendly, which also makes the compound a bit harder here and there.

I remember 15 years ago going to the south of Italy in summer, to Sarno near Naples or La Conca, and there were like five centimetres of rubber layered on the track. Tires were super soft and the grip on new tires was unbelievable. Today you don’t see that anymore, unless they put resin on a new surface.

Which compound is faster in the cold, and which in the heat?

The soft tire likes the cold. The hard tire loves the warm.

If you’re in winter and there are five degrees of track temperature, the tires struggle to heat up. Compare that to a track at 60 degrees in summer, which happened way too many times in the summer of 2026. When the air was 40 degrees and sunny, the track would easily go above 60 or 65 degrees.

At five degrees you know the softer tires will be faster, because they don’t need a high working temperature to create grip. Friction coefficient is what grip is all about, and on a soft tire the working window is shifted towards lower temperatures.

Put a hard tire on a very cold track and you’ll struggle with grip like crazy. You’ll be driving on ice, wondering what on earth is going on with your kart, and it’s just because the tire is too hard. Hard tires take so long to switch on that you slide for the first laps. Soft tires are working by lap two or three.

The wet is the same story. In the wet the tires are cold all the time, so a softer tire will always be better than a harder one there.

Those softer tires are very, very good in winter. You can destroy track records. And it’s not the kind of grip that puts you on two wheels. It’s good grip that lets you brake super late, carry mid speed and get on the gas early.

When is a hard tire faster than a soft one?

Number one: when the track is extremely hot. Above 60 degrees of track temperature, the soft tire overheats. If you put the tires on the ground at 65 degrees without even driving, they are already in the range you’d be happy with on a January day. So straight out of the gate you feel the grip. Then it fades as you drive, especially if you drive aggressively.

The harder compound struggles a bit more in the first two, three laps. But then it holds, even improves, while the soft tire is falling down a cliff.

Number two: an abrasive track. Abrasiveness comes from the little stones in the surface. On some tracks your tires last for days. On others, at the same track temperature, they’re cooked after a few sessions. An abrasive track that is still cold, like February or March in Europe, doesn’t destroy the tires that much. Abrasive plus hot is the deadly combo, and specifically for soft tires.

I’ve seen it multiple times between Vega and MG in 60 Mini. At La Conca we had two races back to back. One was WSK on Vega. The week after was on MG. And with the MGs we were three, four tenths quicker. With the Vegas it was the first two laps and then the times dropped quite dramatically. With the MGs the lap times kept getting faster every single lap.

Quite counterintuitive, because Vega is the softer tire. But both weekends were extremely hot and abrasive. The perfect storm.

Is the soft tire faster for qualifying or for the race?

This is the point most people miss. When we ask if the soft tire is faster, do we mean one lap, or a 25 lap race?

Over a qualifying lap, the soft tire wins 99% of the time. Even on a 60 degree day, one push lap keeps the tire relatively low in temperature.

Over 25 laps you don’t care that much about the peak. You care about consistency. You don’t want to be really fast on lap one and two and then struggle for the other 23.

So the third thing to put in the equation is mileage. If you plan to do five laps max in qualifying and throw them away, softer is faster nine times out of ten. If it’s a whole race on a hot, abrasive track, I’m pretty sure the medium or hard compound will be better over the stint in many cases.

And on the soft tire in a long hot stint you have to drive smoother and control the wheelspin and the slides. How you nurse a set to the last lap is kart tire management, a different topic.

Why don’t soft tires always feel faster on track?

Because it’s not just about the tires you have on. It’s also about the rubber everyone else is laying down.

In Italy there are races where the T4 and Tillotson classes run on very hard tires, and the session right after them goes out on a track that is a disaster in terms of grip. Even with soft tires those drivers are super slow compared to their normal lap times. You can’t erase a slippery rubber layer by putting super soft tires on your own kart.

Many times I was upset about it. I’d think, okay, now I’m going to do a super fast lap on these softs. And nothing really changed.

A super soft tire gives you a really quick lap time if the rest of the drivers on track are also running that same rubber.

That’s why, the few times a track was exceptionally fast, like at a recent FIA World Championship at Franciacorta where track records fell, it was because everybody was on the same very soft tire. Even at 50% effort you’d go way faster than on a slippery day.

So when I go testing on a random day, I look, almost in a sneaky way, at what every driver is running. At Lonato, at South Garda Karting, the pit lane is open for 45 minutes every hour, so you can choose when to go out. I try to go out with the drivers on soft tires like mine. This is the compound half of track evolution.

Why are old kart tires slower even if they were never used?

Whenever tires are produced they get stored in warehouses. MG are made in Brazil, so they’re stored in warehouses in Brazil.

Older tires are slower because they accumulate more heat cycles. Even if they are not exposed to the sun, they go from cold to hot, cold to hot, every day. Even if the temperature inside the warehouse only changes by 10 degrees, that’s some sort of heat cycle. A proper heat cycle is when the tires get very hot on track, up to 80 degrees, and then cool down.

With each heat cycle the tire gets a little bit harder, a little bit harder, a little bit harder.

That’s why brand new tires are way softer than the same set after 30 sessions. In summer it maybe doesn’t hurt too much. In winter, when you want a soft tire, new against old makes a big difference.

So a hard compound that has been sitting for a year or two is harder still. If your new set feels slow, there are other reasons too, and I go through them in my new tire qualifying tips.

Does your height change which tire suits you?

Yes. The driver really makes a difference in the first laps on hard tires when it’s slippery. Taller drivers especially.

That’s a bit like Disney World for tall drivers. Normally they’re penalised on soft tires, because it’s almost like having too much grip. Everything gets too stiff, the chassis gets a bit lazy.

But when it’s slippery and the hard tires aren’t generating grip, a tall driver loads the tires more. With a higher centre of gravity you load the tires more, which generates temperature, which generates grip.

If you’re a short driver, you’ll be really strong on soft tires, especially in summer when all the tall drivers struggle. But in winter you’ll struggle massively.

I saw this racing full time in 2012 and 2013 against Lando Norris. He was 25 centimetres shorter than me, and in summer he was so fast. Sometimes he’d be a tenth quicker and I couldn’t do anything, also because he had less drag on the straights. But in the winter months I would be unbeatable in pretty much every session. I got so many victories in the winter.

How do you drive soft tires differently from hard tires?

With softer tires you can combine everything a bit more. More braking, more G force under braking, more combined lateral and longitudinal load.

Yes, you can brake a tiny bit later than on hard tires, and get on the gas a bit earlier. But it’s mostly the minimum speed you carry through the corner that is insanely different.

On hard tires in the cold, the mistake is to back off because there’s no grip. It’s the opposite. Pushing is what creates the temperature, and the temperature is what creates the grip. How you get them there on the first lap is in why your outlap decides your race.

Is every soft tire the same?

No. Every tire needs to be learned. LeCont compared to Vega, they’re both very soft, but the LeCont is impressively stable even though it’s a soft tire. It’s so enjoyable to drive because it makes it easy to stay consistent, and you don’t drop the time. I think LeCont did a really good job there.

Other compounds are not as good. The Dunlop I used in KZ was not a good compound. The tire was blistering, and there were differences in radius, so it would pull to one side on the straights. It was a pain to drive.

And when you compare two different brands, it’s not apples to apples. A soft from one brand can still be faster than a hard from another brand even on a very hot day, because a lot of things make a tire fast, not only the compound.

It’s not just whether they’re hard or soft. There’s a whole DNA to a tire.

Why do some teams soften their tires illegally?

Because softer is so much faster, some drivers and teams take the shortcut of softening tires with chemicals. That’s cheating, and even if you don’t get caught it’s just immoral. It’s unsportsmanship at its purest. Sometimes they get caught in WSK races, and it’s a total reputation killer.

The reason they try is the size of the gain. If a tire reads 45 for softness on a scale from 1 to 100, and you get it to 40 or 35, that’s three or four tenths or more. In the cold or the wet, a treated tire can give one or two seconds.

There’s nothing you can do in the setup to reproduce that.

I’ve heard it’s done a lot in the UK, but it’s spread worldwide. It’s something I wish didn’t exist. In CIK-FIA and WSK there’s parc ferme for tires, which is the right decision, because the additives are very hard to detect. Not every organiser has the space and logistics for that. Then it’s down to them to keep consistency, measured with a durometer, so that tires found to be too hard get replaced.

How do you set up the kart for soft or hard tires?

The driver needs to adapt, and so does the setup.

With soft tires you may have to reduce tire pressures quite a bit, and change the front geometry, perhaps add more camber.

With very hard tires you may have to raise the centre of gravity, stiffen up the rear a bit, increase the caster at the front, sometimes raise the ride height. You’re helping the tire get the load and the grip a soft tire already has.

Where exactly the pressures go is its own subject. I explain it in kart tire management, and you can get a starting point from the tire pressure calculator. More on chassis changes in the setup guides.

Can you choose your tire compound in a kart race?

Most of the time, no. When you go racing in karting they give you the tires and that’s what you race on. So you can’t overthink it.

But it’s good for drivers, mechanics and coaches to be aware of the differences, and of when one compound makes a big difference against another. On a test day, for example, it tells you who you want to be on track with.

By the way, choosing the compound is one thing. Getting the best out of the tire you’re given is another one, and that’s one of the things I work on with drivers in my six month training program.

Frequently asked questions

Are soft kart tires always faster than hard ones?

In about 90% of conditions, yes, and over a single qualifying lap almost always. The exception is a long stint on a hot, abrasive track, where a soft compound gives one or two strong laps and then overheats, while a harder compound stays consistent.

Why are soft tires so much better in winter?

Because their working window sits at lower temperatures. On a five degree track a hard tire never switches on and you slide for laps, while a soft compound is working by lap two or three. The same is true in the wet.

At what track temperature do soft tires start to struggle?

Above about 60 degrees of track temperature they overheat after the first laps, and an abrasive surface makes it worse. At La Conca in 60 Mini, on two hot weekends back to back, the harder MG was three to four tenths a lap quicker than the softer Vega.

Do unused kart tires get slower over time?

Yes. Every day in a warehouse takes the tire through a cold to hot cycle, even a 10 degree swing with no sun, and each cycle hardens the compound a little. An older set is harder and slower than a fresh one, which matters most in the cold.

Does driver height affect which tire suits you?

It does. A taller, heavier driver loads the tire more and generates more temperature and grip, a real advantage on hard tires and in winter. A shorter driver is stronger on soft tires in summer, when tall drivers find the kart overloaded and lazy.

If you want me to look at how you’re using the grip you have, corner by corner, send me your onboard for an onboard review.