Finding Your Braking Point

First off, the ideal braking point doesn’t exist. Your braking point is dependent on many variables like your position on the track, the way you come onto the brake and of course the car’s physical limitations like cold tires or hot brakes. More often than not the problem that racing drivers encounter is not that they brake too soon. It’s a common misconception that you will go faster around the track if only you brake later. Sometimes racing drivers brake too little, too hard, too short or for too long. You rarely ever brake later than you still feel that you are in control of the car. Too many engineers, mechanics, trainers and drivers are very caught up in the idea that if only the driver brakes later, the lap times will improve.

But instead the main thing to focus on is how you brake. Do I, as a racing driver, need to push 80 bars or 50 bars? How many milliseconds should I use to reach my peak pressure, how long should I hold my peak pressure for, how much time should I spend bleeding off the brakes and when should I finish my braking altogether? Therefore the braking point is not only a physical place on the track that you can move – but it’s the sensing of the track and a consciousness of your own technique that will get you the results that you want.

Remember that you can’t improve on all aspects at once, but you have to divide the braking process into smaller and more manageable bits. First you have to identify whether your braking point is a physical place on the track or if you only sense it. Afterwards you have to work on your peaking of the brake pressure, this furthermore depends on whether you left foot brake or right foot brake and how fast and sensitive your feet are in general.