Hello :-) My kid has been driving indoor karts for 4 years now and he's around 0.5 sec behind top drivers (which is very good and not good at all, depending what you're looking after). I've observed him on hundreds of races and karts do jump :-) They jump when coming too fast in a corner and turning strongly. In that situation, the wheels slides a bit and then regain grip instantly. When that happens the kart starts bumping around the front wheel which stands outside the corner. This costs a few 0.1 of seconds (that's huge in races). This happens to experienced pilots as well but they usually manage to find the limit in the curve and better breaking points to avoid it.

Simulating this is what interests me because it seems absolutely non obvious.

As said by someone else, maybe I'm looking at a problem that his out of my reach (my physics skills are rather weak). That is, I have no idea of how that happens.

I found this article that goes in depth into kart cornering[0]. It talks about chassis flex and briefly mentions wheel hop.

I'm not a physics person either, but wheel hop seems to occur when the force overcomes friction between tire/track, causing an oscillation between grip/no grip. It is a lot worse on vehicles with suspension, because they have more give.

I find it easier to visualize with a car, because it is more pronounced. Although with a car it is usually occurs on a standing start, whereas with karts it is a lateral force thing.

This karting forum suggests high center of gravity contributes to wheel hop.[1]

[0] https://www.paradigmshiftracing.com/racing-basics/how-karts-... [1] https://4cycle.com/karting/threads/wheel-hop.87876/