Yeah this
and there are two ways to do it.. you can hold L trigger to stop your claw's movement and use the stick to lean into the adjacent lanes.. but (and I'm not sure if this is exactly the same, but with practice it's working well for me) with nice gentle stick nudging you can do the same thing without holding L. Slide up next to enemies and let one of your pincers move over into the next lane and they'll run into it.
I love the gentle inertia of your movement.. I never played Tempest with a trackball but I imagine this is made to feel kinda like that... feels amazing when you get good at it, whooshing around the rim and coming to a halt gradually (well the inertia curve is steep/quick, but not instant), with precision.