The Good & Bad Of Sliding

By Alessio Lorandi, 2013 CIK-FIA World Champion, KF-Junior. Updated on 15 October 2026.

You may think that you’re fast when sliding the kart around, almost like in a drifting state. But the reality is that if you’re sliding too much, you’re definitely leaving lap time on the table.

Now let me explain. You could be sliding because you’re pushing to the limit, and that’s fine. You should be constantly on the limit of sliding, with a slight bit of sliding. But when you’re sliding too much, there is always a reason. And most of the time the reason is you.

Is sliding in a kart good or bad?

Both. You’ll be like, “Oh, but Alessio, shouldn’t it be just good or just bad to slide?” No. Let me explain.

There are two separate ways of sliding, good and bad. Sliding is most of the time a mistake, but it can also be a strategic tool.

The bad ones:

• Wrong line. The absolute worst.
• Dirty steering. The second worst.
• Dirty pedals. Too abrupt on the brakes or the throttle.
• Over pushing when it’s hot, grippy and on soft tires. You overheat the tires and slide even more.

The good ones:

• Warming up the tires.
• Pushing in the cold on hard tires.
• Inducing rotation when the rear has a bit too much grip.

And by the way, in a kart you will always be sliding a little bit to be fast. Max Verstappen said the same in a podcast when he was in Brazil: in karting you have to always be on the edge of sliding. The slip angle of a kart tire is completely different from a single-seater. In single-seaters you’re pretty much driving on rails.

Why does missing the line make your kart slide?

Because you miss the grip. Say this is the corner, this is the ideal line, and you miss the turning point. You go off the grip and of course you’re going to be sliding. That’s negative sliding.

If you miss the optimal grip level, you have sub-optimal grip. You make more metres, you have less speed because you’re sliding off the grip, and the lap time gets worse.

And this is what 90% of the drivers do until they become race winners. Even when they are race winners, it’s the most likely mistake. You push too much in a corner, you miss the line a bit, and you’re sliding.

I had two drivers at Lonato on the data, last sector, last hairpin. The lines were not that different, to be honest. But one of them was a bit too tight coming out of the second hairpin and didn’t prepare the last one enough. So he arrived with the wrong angle, tried to make the rotation, and slid. He got pushed out on the exit, and the gap to the other driver kept growing in that one corner.

That’s why the line comes before everything. Have a look at my guide to the racing line and to where to put the apex.

Not sure which kind of sliding you are doing? Send me your onboard. I look at your lines and your steering corner by corner in an onboard review.

How do steering and pedal inputs make a kart slide?

Think about the traction circle. The tire has a certain amount of grip, braking, accelerating and turning, all from the same circle. If you ask more than that from the tire, it slides.

Steering. You go into a corner and instead of a tiny bit of steering, you use a lot. If you steer too much for what the grip level allows, the rear slides. And that’s not because of the kart. That’s because of you, most of the time. Keep adding steering in the middle of the corner and you start a vicious cycle of corrections and oversteer slides. That’s why smooth is fast.

Pedals. In a fast corner I always tell my drivers to barely touch the brakes. If anything, lift or tap them a bit. If the corner needs 10% brake and you give it 100%, of course you slide the rear. Between the two, the pedals are the least bad. The steering is worse.

And many drivers get it the wrong way round. Very smooth with the brake pedal, very aggressive with their hands. Then the kart feels like it’s sliding and they think it’s the setup. You want to be aggressive on the brakes in the slow corners and the hairpins, that’s threshold braking, and super smooth with the steering.

Is the kart sliding, or are you making it slide?

I’ve been on the racetrack for about 22 years. What I see is that about 80% of the time it’s the driver making the mistake, and even making it seem like the kart is behaving wrong. There’s a big but subtle difference between the kart sliding and the driver making the kart slide.

So before you go to your mechanic and ask for more grip, check the line. Because if you miss the line and you give the kart more grip, it’s going to be even worse. On the exit you’re going to be stuck completely. You’d be fixing something that is not the cause.

Line first. Then, if you’re still sliding, of course you work on the chassis.

I check this on myself too, not only on my drivers. Am I sliding because of the line, because of the chassis, or am I not really sliding at all? In the seat it feels like the kart grips, slides, grips, slides through the corner. Doing that twice in a corner is bad. Three times is worse. A really good corner is one smooth load with only micro slides. You’ll never have zero sliding on the limit, otherwise it means you’re running in the engine.

If you want to see what this looks like on the lateral G trace, PURPL explains how understeer and oversteer show up in the data.

Should you slide the tires to warm them up?

“Remember to warm up the tires, Alessio.” That’s what my mechanic Piero always used to say when we raced together between 2012 and 2014. I never forgot it.

So yes. If you drive under the limit, you will not warm up the tires, I promise you. You brake hard, you accelerate while turning, you brake while turning. You push the tire beyond the traction circle on purpose and it creates heat.

But there are two separate things. One is putting load and energy into the tires progressively. The other is sliding them way beyond the slip angle. When the tires are brand new, soft, cold and on low pressures, sliding them too much damages them. You get graining, the inside of the tire still cold and the outside too hot. You almost have to massage them. Otherwise F1 drivers would be drifting every corner before the start.

In a formation lap you go slow, so you weave and combine brakes and steering. In a qualifying outlap you start pushing early instead.

And once the race starts, forget all that and push. At the 2011 Winter Cup at Lonato I watched Max Verstappen, one category above me. He braked so hard on the entries that smoke came from his rear tires.

Should you slide more in the cold on hard tires?

Yes. This is one of the good ways of sliding.

Say it’s December, you’re driving in the UK, on hard tires like Maxxis, MG or Comet. It’s going to be very hard to generate any grip. The only way for you to generate grip is to push more, slide the tires, go beyond the traction circle. That’s a good slide, because it brings the tires up to temperature.

Hard tires take so long to switch on in the cold. With five degrees of track temperature you’re going to be sliding for a lot of the first laps until you get some grip. A soft tire works at a lower temperature, so it’s there by lap two or three. I explain the difference in soft vs hard kart tires.

But slide by pushing. Not by making the wrong line.

Why should you not slide when it is hot and grippy?

Because it’s the opposite of the cold. Hot track, grippy circuit, soft tires, and you’re over pushing? You overheat the tires for sure, and then you slide even more. Slide, slide, slide, overheat, and you’re outside the traction circle because of your own mistake.

I’ve seen summer days with 60 degrees of track temperature many times. A soft tire there gives you a strong peak lap on lap one. Then it drops off, you start to slide, and you lose more and more performance through the session. In a long stint like a race, you feel it big time.

More on keeping them alive in my tire management guide.

And if you want to work on your driving with me for longer, look at my six month training program. There are lessons you watch when you want and a live call with me every week.

When should you make the rear slide on purpose?

When the rear has a little bit too much grip and the kart doesn’t rotate on its own. I call this inducing rotation. More rotation means a little bit more rear sliding, and that’s positive sliding.

If the kart already rotates on its own, don’t. But if it takes you so long to rotate the kart, waiting, waiting, you’re losing time. Every 0.01 seconds extra to rotate the kart, over 12 corners, is 1.2 tenths over a full lap.

So how do you make it rotate with your driving?

• Brakes. The number one way. In the hairpins, brake later, harder, hold the brakes a bit longer, and the kart rotates better. That’s trail braking.
• Speed. Carry more speed into the corner. When you run in an engine and go slow, the kart has no rotation at all.
• Body. Lean out a little in the mid corner, not on the entry. It lifts the inside rear wheel.
• Steering. A tiny bit more in the mid corner. Not too much, or you’re back to dirty steering.

When it’s hot I prefer not to do too much of this, because rotating with sliding puts maybe a bit too much temperature in the rears. In that case try to get the setup right with your mechanic instead. The full method is in my guide to weight transfer and rotation.

How much should a kart slide in the wet?

The way to drive a kart in the wet, any category, Mini, Junior, Senior, shifters, is to be always sliding a little bit on the rear end.

I have an onboard of a driver I was coaching, going through the fastest corner of the circuit in the wet. A right hander. Slower drivers turn to the right. He gives one steering input to the right, the first and only one, and the kart rotates immediately. Then it’s sliding, sliding, sliding through the mid-exit. It’s never really turning to the right anymore. If he didn’t create that rotation early, he would just understeer and go out.

But it’s a controlled slide. You don’t want to be abrupt. Most of the time in the wet we lack front grip more than rear grip, so rotation is what makes you fast. That’s why I like my seat far forward in the wet.

More on this in weight transfer in the wet and my wet driving tips.

How do you learn to control a slide?

By sliding. If you’re driving constantly below the limits, the kart is never sliding by definition, so you never practise your car control.

Car control is not yes or no. It’s zero to a hundred. Can you feel if the kart is sliding? Is it understeer or oversteer? And if you carried way too much speed into a corner, can you save it and lose 0.01 instead of half a second?

When I was 11, my mechanic taught me how to drive a kart with a lot of rotation. I was telling him in Italian, “scivola dietro”, it’s sliding at the rear. He said no worries, just keep driving. And he was right. It was tricky at first, then I got used to it. And that’s what you want the day the track gets grippy and everybody struggles with understeer.

That’s why at BabyRace I make my drivers drive with loose rears and grippy fronts. It’s like driving on ice every lap. Drive in the rain as much as you can, go ice karting if you get the chance. I went once and loved it.

And push yourself. Nobody else was pushing me, apart from my mechanic sometimes. It was me. The difference is chasing the slide and being comfortable with it. More in the 3 best ways to develop car control.

Does sliding feel fast but make you slower?

Very often, yes. You may feel like, “Oh, I’m fast, I’m sliding, I’m on the limit.” There is that famous racing line: if everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough. True. But it doesn’t mean you should be sliding like an idiot by missing the lines and then feel fast because you’re countersteering all the time. That’s not the way to drive.

When you push the limits you’ll always have some balance imperfection. One corner out of five with oversteer is okay. Four out of five is not. And if I have to choose, I take a little oversteer over a little understeer every day, because I can control it and carry more minimum speed. But grippy with high rotation, not loose. I explain why in understeer vs oversteer.

And remember the driver at Lonato. The slide started with the wrong angle on the entry and it pushed him out on the exit. That’s why I keep telling you to prioritize the exits.

You should be pushing on the racing line, a little bit on the edge of sliding. But you shouldn’t be sliding all the time because of the wrong line or very bad steering or pedal inputs.

Frequently asked questions

Is sliding faster in karting?

Only a little. A fast kart is always on the edge of sliding, but sliding too much costs lap time. The worst slide is the wrong line, then dirty steering, then dirty pedals.

When is it good to slide a kart?

To warm up the tires, when pushing in the cold on hard tires, and to induce rotation when the rear has too much grip and the kart does not rotate on its own.

Why does my kart slide in fast corners?

Most of the time it is the driver: too much steering or too much brake. In a fast corner barely touch the brakes, lift or tap them. If the corner needs 10% brake and you give it 100%, the rear slides.

Should you slide the tires on the outlap?

Put load and energy into them from the first metre, but do not slide brand new soft tires on low pressures too much, or you get graining. Once the race starts, just push.

Is it the kart or the driver when the kart slides?

About 80% of the time it is the driver. Fix the line first. If you miss the line and add grip to the kart, the exit gets even worse. If you still slide on the right line, work on the chassis with your mechanic.

If you want me to tell you which kind of sliding you are doing, send me your onboard for an onboard review. And if you want to fix it for good, with your driving in it, that is what we do in the 6 months transformation.