This is the new Grid driving shoe from Italian company Piloti, as with most of their footwear, it’s designed to be everyday-wearable, and to offer some serious improvements for driving feel and sensitivity when compared to your average sneaker.
The heel of the Grid shoe uses Piloti’s patented “Roll Control 2.0” tech, it’s designed to keep the heel of your foot comfortable when switching between pedals, and it really comes into its own on longer (or more sporting) cross-country drives.
This is the new Grid driving shoe from Italian company Piloti, as with most of their footwear, it’s designed to be everyday-wearable, and to offer some serious improvements for driving feel and sensitivity when compared to your average sneaker.
History Speedrun: Piloti
Kevin Beard filed the patent for Piloti’s signature curved driving heel on December the 17th, 1999, the same year he founded the company in Southern California with D’Arlene Beard. He’d trained at Art Center College of Design and designed athletic shoes at both Adidas and Reebok, and then became the Design Director at K-Swiss. His patent, granted in 2003, described a heel of near-constant curvature that lets the driver pivot between throttle and brake without lifting the foot – Piloti called it Roll Control and it would become the cornerstone of the company.
The first range of Piloti shoes included Nomex-lined racing boots and street shoes that used the same technology without the fire-resistant lining. Street models included the Prototipo and the low-cut Spyder. In 2005 legendary racing driver Bob Bondurant got a signature DTM shoe made from baseball glove leather.
Sports car driver Ron Fellows later credited Piloti with extending his career after he developed nerve damage in his right foot, the shoes helped him avoid the foot pain he had been enduring that had nearly forced his departure from motorsport.
Sadly, Piloti didn’t survive the recession and closed in 2012. This wasn’t to be the end though, Canadian Tire bought the brand and relaunched it in 2014 with Performance, Casual, and Luxury driving shoe lines. The brand was later bought by Windsong, the investment firm of Bill Sweedler, who shared the 2016 Le Mans GTE Am class win with Townsend Bell and Jeff Segal.
Most Piloti shoes are now handmade in either Portugal or Italy, and the company has well over a dozen different model variants in production, with sizing ranging from 7 to 14 US.
The Grid Driving Shoe By Piloti
The Grid is a new low-top driving sneaker that was launched in September of 2026. Its upper combines ballistic nylon with overlays of Italian leather and suede, each pair is made in Portugal.
It’s built on what Piloti calls its Endurance last, for the uninitiated, a last is the foot-shaped form a shoe is made around, and it determines the fit. Piloti says this one is shaped for a secure fit during long stints behind the wheel. The heel uses Roll Control 2.0, the current version of the curved heel Kevin Beard filed a patent for back in 1999.
The Grid is offered in three colorways – Red/Black, Navy, and Mist/Black/White, and sizes run from US men’s 7 to 14, and half sizes are offered from 8.5 to 11.5.
According to Piloti, the curve runs from the sole up the back of the heel and spreads the load as the foot rocks between pedals during spirited driving. The Grid is offered in three colorways – Red/Black, Navy, and Mist/Black/White.
Sizes run from US men’s 7 to 14, and half sizes are offered from 8.5 to 11.5. There’s also a sizing chart on the site, allowing you to measure your foot and get the right size first time. You can visit the official Piloti store here if you’d like to read more or get your own.
Images courtesy of Piloti
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
