Breaking Technique in Wheel-to-Wheel Racing

The first aspect of your technique that deteriorates during battles for position is your braking technique. This includes the braking point, the braking pressure, and the tendency to lock up. Locking up the tires is one of the worst mistakes you can make while fighting for position—it destroys your race by sending you straight, potentially causing contact with other cars and ending your race prematurely.

The Challenge of Braking in Traffic

Even when driving alone during qualifying sessions, it's already difficult to maximize your braking performance. You must maximize lateral balance, keeping the car 50/50 so that the braking is perfectly balanced. If you move the car even slightly while maintaining the same braking pressure, you'll lock the unloaded tire. This is something practiced extensively during hot lapping, but it becomes extremely easy to forget once you start fighting for position.

Light Hands Under Braking

There's a fundamental principle to remember regarding lateral balance and brake optimization: light hands under braking. When you start braking, your hands should relax slightly on the steering wheel. This concept becomes crucial during position battles when you need to change direction quickly.

Consider this scenario: you're braking right behind someone, they brake earlier than expected, and you're about to hit them. You can quickly turn slightly to the side while releasing the brakes proportionally. The relationship is simple—turning and braking cannot both be performed at maximum simultaneously:

• As soon as you start braking hard, relax your hands

• As soon as you start turning, release your brakes

• If you're changing direction even slightly while braking, you must adjust brake pressure accordingly

The adjustment must be fast but proportional. When you reactivate your hands to change direction, you must release your brakes slightly. Conversely, if you want to brake very hard, you must relax your hands and the car must go straight to benefit from maximum braking without locking the tires.

The Worst Braking Mistake in Racecraft

The most dangerous mistake in racecraft when it comes to braking is adding steering input without changing brake pressure. If you're braking at 80% (right on the limit before locking), and then you see something happening that requires you to move more to the inside or outside, adding steering without releasing the brakes will cause a lock-up. This can lead to a serious crash.

To prevent this, practice changing your actions aggressively during practice sessions and private parties. Experiment with what you need to do with your steering and hands to avoid locking while executing direction changes. This is critical because sometimes you don't plan on changing direction—you're trying to avoid a crash or something that appears suddenly. You need to be able to immediately change the car's direction while on the limit, or completely abort the turn and brake in a straight line.

Aggressive Transitions

These transitions don't necessarily have to be smooth. You can quickly drop the brakes, turn a little bit, then get back on the brakes, turn again, and back on the brakes. In urgent situations where you need to avoid an incident or prevent contact, forget "smooth is fast" temporarily. The key is not to turn and brake at the same time beyond the grip limit. Make the transitions more aggressive if necessary to stay within the limit and allow the car to turn in these situations.

Visual References While Racing

Finding References from the Inside Line

When you're on the inside line during a race, your usual reference markers from qualifying may be difficult to see because another car may be blocking your view. However, this shouldn't be a problem if you use your eyes correctly. You'll rely on two techniques:

• Peripheral vision

• Prediction of where the reference will be

You don't need to fixate your focused vision on a braking reference for long. Instead of staring obsessively at the 100-meter board as it approaches, you can check it briefly, look forward, check again, look forward, and repeat. With just a few glances, you can predict when to start braking.

Even if your reference is blocked for the last half second before you start braking, you can take a fast glance at it earlier, then look at the track ahead. Create an imaginary line going across the track based on that reference, and use that imaginary area to brake without panicking. If you know the reference will be blocked, create a reference area based on the glance you took earlier. Make your eyes work quickly to absorb information and have a plan for approximately where you'll brake into the corner, especially when you can't see the physical reference.

Adjusting for Draft

Before hard braking zones when racing, you will not brake at exactly the same place you practiced during qualifying. The reason is draft—your car is literally faster by a significant amount because of the slipstream. If you brake at the same reference point (for example, at the 100-meter board in qualifying), you might overshoot the corner when racing behind someone.

Solutions for dealing with draft:

• Brake half a blink of an eye earlier than your qualifying reference

• Lift off the throttle slightly right before braking for a fraction of a second to reduce speed by 2-6 kph, bringing you closer to your practiced speed

This is especially important at tracks like Monza, where you might be taking draft for 2 kilometers or more. Your car will be significantly faster than you're used to, so your braking reference must be earlier.

Advanced Braking Tactics

Adjusting Track Position with Brake Pressure

There's a useful trick for adjusting your track position during long braking zones by modulating your braking pressure. If you start braking a little too early while fighting for track position, you can release your brakes slightly to regain track position right before the corner. As you start braking and realize the other car is positioning themselves a certain way, release your brakes slightly to close the gap and adjust your position.

However, if you're braking too late, there's nothing you can do to recover the situation. This is why it's important while racing to give yourself a small margin by not braking at the absolute latest possible point. This provides more options and flexibility during the braking phase.

Spatial Awareness During Braking

When braking hard in traffic, you need spatial awareness of cars behind you, similar to checking mirrors when braking in city traffic. If you start braking earlier than the cars behind you, you must be aware that they're closing on you. At this point, you can use the brake release technique to gain track position and avoid being punted from behind.

The driver behind cannot accelerate faster than their grip limit allows, so if you maintain awareness and release the brakes appropriately, you can save yourself from contact. Failing to do so—continuing to brake hard without awareness of closing cars—can result in unavoidable contact.

Avoiding Lock-Ups to Prevent Incidents

Lock-ups while racing can trigger a chain reaction of events leading to incidents. When you add steering while maintaining excessive brake pressure, you'll lock the front tires. This causes you to go wide, overheat the fronts, and prevents proper acceleration. When you go wide and lock up, you send a psychological signal to other drivers that creates an "invitation" for them to attempt passes.

Drivers behind you will automatically react to your wide positioning by moving to the inside, predicting that you'll be wide after the apex. This can create complicated multi-car situations where:

• One car reacts to your positioning and moves inside

• That car may be hyper-focused on you and forget about other cars

• Contact occurs between multiple cars as a result

While you may not be directly at fault for contact that results, your initial mistake of locking up triggers the sequence of events. By protecting your own positioning—not locking up, getting the car pointed correctly, and accelerating at the same time as others—you eliminate the opportunity for these complicated situations to develop. This defensive approach to braking helps you survive multi-car battles and avoid incidents that stem from your own errors.