There's no point in understanding how we should release or apply or modulate our brake pressure if we're not actually capable of physically doing it. This lesson is about developing the sensitivity with your foot so you can easily control your brake traces.

Developing Precise Brake Control

The first thing we need to develop before advancing is controlling the brake pressure super precisely, one by one percent. You should be able to apply the brakes slowly, apply the brakes quickly, release the brakes slowly and release the brakes quickly.

In your simulator we're going to do some exercises while holding the steering wheel in the most relaxed way possible. This is going to be important because sometimes we start tensing up our upper shoulders and hands while trying to be precise with our brakes. Make sure you're separating your upper body tension from what's happening with the pedals. Do this exercise while breathing in the most relaxed way possible.

Finding One Percent Brake Pressure

First let's make sure you touch your brakes so you know exactly where one percent is. You should be able to easily move between zero percent and one percent. This is so you can identify how much pressure you need to really know how it feels when you hit one percent.

One of the things that really makes you inconsistent is like you're breaking 20 percent and you think you're actually breaking 10 or 5 or 1. Sometimes you don't think you're breaking at all, you're like just resting your foot and it's actually reading two, three, four, five percent and this is terrible. So make sure you find that place between zero and one percent.

Then maintain that one percent while relaxing your hands on the steering wheel and breathing normally for a while until you're perfectly comfortable with it. So so far one percent breaks, relaxed upper shoulders, relaxed hands, just that.

Increasing Pressure to 99 Percent

Next it's time to start moving your pressure up as slowly as humanly possible. All still holding your hands in the most relaxed way and breathing normally. Continue pressing one by one percent until you get to 99 percent. Don't reach 100 percent yet. If you do it's fine just bring it back to 99 percent.

This is very important. The reason I want you to reach 99 percent and not 100 is that there's a big danger of breaking way over 100 percent and never knowing which totally kills your precision. I've seen students breaking the equivalent of 300, 400 percent because their pedals were not properly set and of course the game doesn't show you that percentage it would just be stuck on 100 percent. It's impossible impossible to have any kind of breaking precision if this happens. To make sure you're safe from this break 99 percent.

The Press Less Technique

When you're comfortable maintaining the 99 percent start releasing the breaks one by one percent. Don't worry if it drops too quickly right away and if it does just bring it back to 99 percent and try again. It's actually normal to not have the precision to drop it from 99 to 98 right away. It's probably going to drop down to 90 or 80 or 70 at first. That's where it gets tricky.

Releasing the breaks slowly is much easier when you don't actively think of dropping your breaks or lifting your foot. Instead you're going to continue pressing using exactly the same muscles that you use to apply the pressure. But now you're going to press just less and this is what I call the press less technique. You press a tiny bit less and the pedal itself should start pushing back and the pressure should go down with tiny bits.

Practice this for a while until you're sure you're bringing down the pressure down from 99 to 98 to 97 to 96 until you're comfortable moving very slowly between the 90 and the 100 percent range. That's the most difficult to gain the precision initially.

Pedal Settings and Setup

If the pedal is dropping way too quickly no matter what you try make sure you have your force factor settings or break gamma or anything that alters the linearity of the break pressure turned off. Your pedal has to be linear in order for this to work well in both extremes between 0 and 1 percent and between 99 and 100 percent.

Remember to not glue your heel to the floor and feel the two pressure points that matter. The ball of your foot against the pedal and your back against the seat.

Completing the Full Range

When you get ultra comfortable with it continue to drop the pressure slowly past 90 all the way until you're back to 1 percent. Don't reach 0 percent yet stay at 1 for a while and then start reapplying the pressure slowly until you're back to 99 percent.

Be patient you will probably want to gain speed and start moving the pressures more quickly. This does not matter for now we're just improving your muscular sensitivity now. Do this very slowly around three or four times or until you can get very comfortable with it. Continue to pay attention to your shoulders and arms keep them relaxed and also breathe very slowly and calmly.

Braking Trace Variations

Square Triangle Trace

The next exercises are going to be variations that will eventually match your actual braking traces that you're going to need while driving. Applying the brakes quickly and then releasing the brakes slowly this is the square triangle trace.

Never kick the brakes from a distance just squeeze them. If you hit it way too hard and too fast and reach 100 percent try again until you're comfortably hitting 99 percent without going over. Imagine that 99 percent is your braking limit and if you hit 100 percent you will lock out the tires.

You should know that this is the most common pattern increasing the pressure quickly releasing it slowly. This is how this exercise should look in the braking meters and in telemetry. Try to replicate that many times until you get super comfortable with it.

Progressive Variations

Let's make variations of this exercise. You can pause this video and try each variation yourself.

• Go quickly to 10 percent then very slowly to 1 percent

• Go quickly to 25 percent then very slowly to 1 percent

• Go quickly to 50 percent then very slowly to 1 percent

• Go quickly to 75 percent then very slowly to 1 percent

• Go very quickly to 99 percent again and then slowly to 1 percent

Make sure you're not changing too much the speed of brake application on the way up. Be careful not to do this or this. Remember these exercises are supposed to improve your braking precision. I'm not telling you that you should break exactly like this in all cars. It's a reference to improve your vocabulary of muscular movements that will come in handy in many situations.

Upper Body Relaxation and Steering Grip

Once again do not tense up your shoulders and your arms and please do not grip the wheel harder when braking. The more you brake the more you should relax your hands.

Trying to break on the limit while gripping your steering too hard will make you lock up much more easily. If you have a direct drive wheel it should do some fast micro movements on the braking that's normal. This is mostly due to slight bumps on the track and the cars automatically adapting to them through the force feedback.

If you grip your steering too hard while braking you're going to prevent the force feedback from doing its job and the lateral balance of the car will move 1 or 2 percent off balance and then the grip of the car won't be literally 50/50 and one side will lock up.

If you do this right you will eventually create a trigger in your brain. Whenever you brake harder you relax your hands more. It will happen without you even thinking about it.

Practice and Mastery

If you nail this lesson you should be able to create any braking trace you want. If this is too difficult for you try again the next day after some good sleep it will definitely be easier and if it's still too bad try checking your pedal settings maybe harder maybe softer but insist until you're super comfortable with it so it can properly work on the next lessons.