Entry Speed Control

The Importance of Braking in Motorsports

Braking is the most important skill in motorsports, not just for lap times but for safety. Your ability to maximize the acceleration is what allows you to control the speed of the car so that it's even capable of staying on track. If you don't understand and feel how much your car can slow down, you will never know actually when to break, how much to break, or even if you will make the corner.

Why Strong Initial Braking Matters

One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is hesitating under brake. If you're afraid of braking hard and you break too softly at first at a late braking reference, you're not slowing down the car when you need it the most. What happens then, you carry too much speed into the corner, you reach the turning point too fast and at this moment there's no going back. If you're too fast at entry, you will either run off track, spin, or crash. This is why your initial brake application is crucial.

The Correct Way to Apply the Brakes

When braking in a straight line, your initial input should be a fast and firm pressure application. This will give you a proper feel of the braking forces that you can trust lap after lap. You need to reach a relatively strong braking pressure immediately because this is what allows you to feel the rate at which the car can slow down.

Building Precision and Trust with Braking References

This quick and strong initial application is also the way to gain precision and trust with your braking references because if you start braking too softly, your deceleration is variable and unpredictable. This means you slow down at a different rate every lap and if your car is not slowing down the same way every time, your references become useless because your entry speeds become inconsistent. And if your corner entry speeds are inconsistent, the car will feel extremely unpredictable because every lap, the car will have a different entry speed.

This is one of the most common mistakes for beginners because braking hard might feel like an intense experience especially when you're relatively close to the corner and the whole process happens in around a second or two.

The Proper Braking Process: Peak First, Then Release

Building Confidence for Non-ABS Cars

I understand that some cars do not have ABS and you really don't have the confidence to brake hard and even how hard can you brake. I'm telling you, you have to reach the peak first and that's the most important thing. If you're not super confident about reaching the peak pressure, you can break medium pressure at first to test and then break a little bit more and then a little bit more but always having the peak at the beginning. That's what matters the most so that you can build the proper shape and then you can adjust the pressures as you gain confidence and as you feel the grip.

Avoiding the Progressive Pressure Mistake

Another big and common mistake in beginners is to continue adding pressure during the braking zone adding more and more brakes as the car slows down. This kind of makes sense because that's how we learn how to do it in a road car in the city but in race cars we should actually do the opposite.

When we brake on a straight line the peak of the braking should happen at the very beginning of braking. From there you either keep that pressure or you release the brakes smoothly. So your brake tracing telemetry should always look like this not like this. There will be some very rare exceptions and we will talk about them in the elevation changes lesson.

Braking from High Speeds

When you're braking from very very high speeds the most important thing is to stay patient on the brakes because you will have to be braking for longer until you slow down for the ideal speed of the corner especially if it's a very low speed corner. You want to continuously feel the speed dropping.

The Early Release Mistake

A very common mistake in beginners is to start braking and then release the brakes too early. What happens then? You still have too much speed when you reach the corner. You turn in way too fast and you overshoot the corner or lose control. Instead you need to stay on the brakes long enough to control how much speed you're carrying and most importantly feel that deceleration happening so that you can rely on that when you start moving your braking references deeper.

Because sometimes braking for a full second and staying on peak pressure for a full second feels like an eternity but in many situations that's the right way of doing it.

Keeping the Car Balanced During Braking

Steering Control During Hard Braking

Another critical part of braking is how you control the steering. During hard braking you want to relax your hands on the steering wheel and keep it straight. But keeping it straight it's not actually trying to actively keep it straight just leave it straight with your hands relaxed as you feel the steering adapting itself very slowly to the bumps. Do not ever grip the steering wheel too hard while braking hard. The harder you brake the more you relax your hands.

The Magic of Self-Centering Forces

Then the magic happens automatically. The self-centering forces of the steering will help you keep the lateral weight balance of the car perfectly 50-50% especially when you hit undulations or bumps. So if your hands are tense and you're grabbing the steering wheel very hard by accident you will add a tiny unnecessary steering angle and fight against the natural forces trying to keep the car stable. So the balance will not be 50-50 anymore it's going to be 49-51 but that is enough to make the car dense a little or even lock the unloaded tires.

Developing the Habit

At first if you're not used to this you have to actively think about this the more you brake the more you relax your hands. But after a while it will just become natural and you won't need to think about it anymore. But make sure this is 100% fixed in your technique so that you don't have to work on braking this bad habit in the future. We're going to discuss more about this in the light hands technique lesson.

Braking for Corners with Less Pressure Required

For corners where you don't have to brake too hard you can brake less but still maintain a similar shape of the brakes more initially than only releasing as you add the steering.

Braking from Corner to Corner

The only situation that will require you to brake slowly is if you're coming from a different corner into another new braking zone. In this case because the car was not 50-50 balanced before the grip for braking is not readily available for 100% brakes yet. So you have to unwind the steering and relax your hands progressively as you slowly apply the brakes.

The Connection Between Hands and Brakes

You see there's this connection between your hands and the brakes that should always be there:

• Whenever you add brakes you relax your hands

• Whenever you have to start turning you have to release your brakes

So remember that whenever your car is straight and your hands are relaxed the whole grip of the tires is immediately available for heartbreaking and that is why you should reach those peak braking pressures immediately.