A Scandinavian flick is a cornering technique for loose surfaces: just before a corner you steer briefly away from it, then sharply into it, so the car's weight swings across like a pendulum, the rear steps out and the nose points at the exit early. The inputs are a brief steer away, a firm turn in with the throttle lifted, and a quick countersteer. It works only where a game's physics let that swing break the rear tires loose; in Mars Rally Championship, a free browser rally game, the handbrake does the rotating instead.
What a Scandinavian flick does to the car
A flick rotates the car before the corner instead of in it. On gravel or snow the front tires lack the grip to turn a car still carrying speed, so a normal turn-in pushes wide; the flick borrows the rotation from the car's own momentum. It deliberately breaks the first rule in how to get faster at rally games: ask the tires for one thing at a time.
It happens in three beats:
- The feint. A short steer away from the corner starts the car yawing the wrong way and leans the body toward the corner's side, compressing the springs there.
- The flick. Steering sharply into the corner reverses the yaw, and the springs throw the weight back across. The rear tires, asked to reverse their sideways force mid-swing, run out of grip on a loose surface and let go. Lifting off, or a dab of brake, moves weight forward and lightens the rear further.
- The catch. With the nose pointing at the exit, countersteer and throttle hold the slide until the car straightens.
That swing gives it its other name, the pendulum turn. It also goes by the Scandi flick or the feint, and takes its name from the Nordic rally drivers who perfected it.
When the flick is faster, and when a clean line wins
The flick pays where a car cannot turn in on steering alone: slow and medium corners on gravel, snow or ice, hairpins, corners that tighten, and front-wheel-drive cars, which cannot swing the rear on throttle. It also rescues a slightly hot entry, since the slide scrubs speed while the car already points the right way.
Everywhere else it loses time. In a fast corner the slide scrubs more speed than the early rotation saves, and tarmac has grip enough to turn cleanly. In a modern four-wheel-drive rally car, a dab of left-foot braking often does the same job with less drama.
A game rewards the flick only if its physics produce it. Rally sims that model suspension and tire load, such as Richard Burns Rally (2004), DiRT Rally 2.0 (2019) and EA Sports WRC (2023), generally reward a well-timed flick; arcade handling that steers the car directly mostly ignores it.
How to do a Scandinavian flick in a rally game
Both are for a left-hander.
On a keyboard
A key is either down or up, so how long you hold it is your only dial.
- Brake in a straight line, earlier than feels right, to a speed the corner can take.
- A car length or two before your usual turn-in, tap Right for a fraction of a second; hold it longer and the car runs wide.
- Lift off the throttle and press Left, fully.
- As the rear comes round, dab Right to countersteer. Dabs, not a hold, or the car swings back the other way.
- Throttle on to settle the slide, and straighten up as the exit opens.
With a controller
A stick helps, because the feint and the catch can both be partial.
- Brake in a straight line on the trigger, easing off toward the turn-in point.
- Push the stick about halfway right, briefly; a full-lock feint carries the car to the outside edge before it ever turns.
- Snap the stick through to full left as you lift off the throttle, or add a touch of brake.
- As the rear swings, let the stick return through the centre into opposite lock, only as far as the slide needs.
- Squeeze the throttle to hold the angle, unwinding the countersteer as the car straightens.
A curved stick response suits the feint: at Mars Rally Championship's default exponent of 1.6, half a stick asks for about a quarter of the available lock. Pairing and deadzones are covered in playing browser racing games with a controller.
The mistakes that turn a flick into a spin
- Flicking late. The rotation arrives after the apex and throws the car wide.
- Feinting too far. The car reaches the outside edge before it turns.
- Staying on the throttle. The rear keeps its grip; the car just wobbles.
- Holding the countersteer. The pendulum swings back and snaps the car the other way.
- Assuming every game rewards it. Some do not, including the one this site is built around.
Flick, handbrake or clean line?
Five ways to rotate a car. The last column is how each behaves in Mars Rally Championship; the next section explains why.
| Technique | What rotates the car | Where it pays | What it costs | In Mars Rally Championship |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clean line | Front tires alone | Fast corners, grippy surfaces | Nothing, at the right speed | Turn-in capped at grip ÷ speed: ≈6°/s at 100 km/h |
| Scandinavian flick | The weight swing breaks the rear loose | Slow and medium loose corners; front-drive cars | Exit speed if mistimed | Less rotation than a plain turn-in; rear slip under ≈12° |
| Lift or trail brake | Load moves onto the front tires | Corner entry, tightening corners | Some speed, often the point | Helps by slowing; no load moves forward |
| Handbrake pivot | Locked rear wheels lose sideways grip | Hairpins, junctions, a hot entry | The most speed of the five | Full lock returns; ≈50–65° of rotation within a second |
| Power oversteer | Drive torque overwhelms the rear tires | Rear- and four-wheel drive on loose ground | Wheelspin if overdone | Traction control caps drive at 90% of each tire's grip |
Does the Scandinavian flick work in Mars Rally Championship?
No, not as a feint. In scripted runs of Mars Rally Championship's own physics on flat regolith at 25 to 80 km/h, no flick got the rear tires past about 12° of slip angle — the same range as a plain turn-in, and well short of the roughly 20° at which the sim treats the rear as sliding. Every version tried, the textbook brake, feint, flick and lift included, left the rover pointing less far into the corner than a plain turn-in made at the same moment.
Two things in the model explain it. First, turn-in is capped at the grip the four tires hold divided by speed, about 6°/s at 100 km/h, until the rear is sliding: corners are planned, not flicked, and a feint is rotation the wrong way that must be undone. Second, nothing lightens the rear. Body roll moves load side to side, equally at both axles, and lifting or braking moves none forward; the nose dips on screen, but the front tires carry no extra load. Lifting and braking help by slowing you, since a slower rover turns tighter.
Low gravity would blunt the move on the real Mars too. At 38% of Earth's gravity the game's tires grip at about 3.1 m/s², against about 7.35 for the same tires and soil on Earth, while the mass to be turned is unchanged, so every rotation starts and stops more slowly.
The handbrake is the Martian flick
What does rotate the rover is the handbrake: Space on a keyboard, A on a gamepad, HANDBRAKE on a touchscreen. Locked rear wheels spend their grip on stopping, leaving none to hold the tail, and the pull lifts the turn-in cap and restores full steering lock, otherwise limited to about 20° above 27 km/h. In the same tests, a 0.4-second pull with the wheel turned in swung the nose through about 50 to 65 degrees within a second at every speed tried; left uncaught, the rover spun past 90° in about two seconds.
Hold it long enough. A stab of a fifth of a second never swung the tail out; 0.4 seconds always did, and 0.3 seconds worked only once the wheel had been turned in for a moment.
So the technique is turn, pull, catch: brake early — 125 metres from 100 km/h — turn in, hold the handbrake for about half a second, release, then countersteer and feed in throttle, unwinding as the rover straightens. Loose regolith helps the catch: a tire sliding sideways ploughs a wedge of soil worth up to 35% more sideways grip, against 6% on hardpack; Mars regolith, explained covers why. The slide costs time, not tires: fully sideways, a tire loses under 5 HP a minute.
Do not stack the two. In the same tests, a feint before the handbrake always left the rover less rotated a second later than the same pull alone, and a short pull on the flick often never broke the tail loose.
Where to try this
Mars Rally Championship is free, runs in a browser tab with no download or account, and works on a phone or a school Chromebook.
- The Proving Ground tutorial: 12 zones in about three minutes, including a hairpin, that teach the handbrake pivot and catching the slide.
- Free roam: no timer, no checkpoints, as many pivots as it takes.
- Stage 2, The Long Run: where not to pivot. Two real corners of about 35–40°, nothing else past 25°, so a clean line wins.
- Games like DiRT Rally: the rally sims worth practising the classic flick in, compared.