JIS SK85 steel is a newly-developed high-grade product in China Steel. In the early stage of production development, slab hot rolling failures often occurred that seriously delayed the production. After detailed production process reviews, it was found that the slabs failures often occurred after machine scarfing that induced the time-delayed cracks on the slab. A further study revealed that the time-delayed cracks were caused by the hard, brittle martensite layer in the slab surface and the stress induced by the hot shock after machine scarfing. A numerical simulation showed that machine scarfing operating at the slab temperature higher than 200℃ can avoid the formation of martensite layer and lower the impact of hot shock.