Race Driving Fundamentals
by Lee Marks

Chapter 7

Braking              

Braking is one of the most important aspects of racing. It involves conditions where cars are of equal power and drivers are turning equal lap times. Your ability to brake your racecar better than another will enable you to pass them and stay in front. In simple terms it can mean the difference between coming in first or second, literally winning or losing.

There are three different types of braking. They are offensive, defensive, and “hot lap”. Remember watching a race and the commentator talks about how the first and second place cars are racing so much that the third place car is catching up to them? That is because the first place car is defending his position through braking tactics and second place is on the offense and is using braking tactics, trying to overtake first place. In both cases drivers are sacrificing lap time seconds in pursuing their goals. Whereas the third place driver is using very precise braking tactics to turn “hot laps” which enable him to gain distance on the first and second. In addition to offensive, defensive, and “hot lap” tactics there are three types of actual braking you can do with your own car. They are braking with your braking system when you use the brake pedal, braking with your engine compression during down shifting or just releasing the gas pedal while in gear and there is a “scrubbing off” speed through creating resistance to your tires’ rolling resistance. Example: every time you get your car the least bit sideways the car is braking. Dirt track drivers use this with great skill every time they go into a corner sideways.

We will start with “hot laps” first. Remember back to the race driving fundamentals, I wrote about time made on straight-aways, where maximum speed is attained through coming out of a corner fast and extending the straight as long as possible (provided there is not another straight after the second corner). In order to “set up the car” for the early apex of this scenario we need to be out of control when we hit the apex. To “set” a car is the ability to make the transition from accelerating to braking and then back to acceleration again.

Phil Hill was a master at “setting” a car. I remember watching him at Monterey in a Chapperal racecar. It was as though he was doing a ballet with the car. There were no abrupt movements or jerky reactions to his inputs of steering, shifting, braking, clutching or applying the gas pedal.

In “setting”, let us say that you are accelerating down a short straight away and you are in third gear. You have a breaking point picked out, an immovable object or at some tracks a marker. You apply the brakes hard at this point you have picked and then as soon as your speed is down where you can downshift without overriding the engine you must “heel and toe” in order to change into second gear. This helps your braking even more. When the car goes from acceleration to braking, the weight of the car is transferred forward unsettling the car.

Changing gears can unsettle the car as well. When your speed is finally down to where you can take the corner safely you should apply the gas to maintain that speed. This application of the gas can also unsettle the car. Once the car is “set” in the mode of your use of your gas pedal to control your speed and momentum through the corner you are “set”. You proceed to control the racecar’s attitude with the gas pedal compensating for over steer or under steer. You then hit your apex and accelerate as much as possible without losing traction.

Plus any time you have the car sideways your braking was enhanced even more and the car was unsettled. As you can see, making the transition from accelerating down a straight and going through all the maneuvers necessary to make it through the corner and get accelerating again requires much skill. In “offensive” braking you must figure out where the braking point of the car in front of you is.

Next you have to ascertain if you can delay your braking later than theirs, thus enabling you to go around him before entering the corner. You do not worry about a precise apex in order to come out of the corner fast. You are just thinking of surviving the corner any way possible. Once you are in front you control the exit speed anyway. So you delay your braking and get in front, then you must extend your final braking into the corner as much as possible. You purposely get a bit sideways to help your braking more, plus this puts the nose of your car well into the corner.

This gives you back the lost area from the late braking tactic. If all goes well then you arrived in front. You must control the exit speed and be sure to block your opponents’ exit path because you were so caught up in the corner just surviving!

In counteracting the above, use defensive braking. Going back to the duel for the corner, if you are in front, start to shorten up your braking point. This will give you added distance to brake when the time comes for when the car following you pulls along side of you thinking you are going to use your same braking point. All of a sudden you delay your braking point too and go deep into the corner not worrying about hitting a correct apex, but just staying in front and controlling the exit path of the corner.

A second tactic is to use a late braking point when you feel second place may be just thinking about trying to out brake you. This will confuse the man in second place into not knowing what braking point you will be using.

In practicing braking it is a lot like doing gymnastics with your practice car. Gymnasts do a little tumble here, a jump there, etc. They later tie together the little bits of their entire routine. First thing to do is to put 35 pound tires in all four tires. Pick out a corner in your neighborhood, one you use daily. Notice where you normally brake at, and then go around the block again. But this time brake a little later.

Then every time you go through that same corner brake later and later until you feel the practice can get a little sideways, not much but just enough in order for you to feel it. Next, try changing gears just before the corner. This time you will be a lot busier! Practice this over and over. Then brake and change gears while entering the first part of the corner. Then lastly brake, get the car sideways, and enter the first part of the corner and change gears too.

Now you have been doing all those gymnastics with 35lbs on all tires and you have noticed and felt certain handling characteristics with this particular tire pressure.  Next, lower the rear tire pressure to 25 pounds and leave the front at 35lbs.  Then try the same procedure through the same corner as before.   Notice the different characteristics with the big reduction in tire pressure.  Now put 35lbs into the rear tires again and reduce the front to 25lbs.  Try this combination and write in your logbook the difference that you experience. 

Then to further help - or confuse - you, have a friend change the tire pressure and tell them to write it on a piece of paper.  Proceed to try out the practice car again, to see if you can feel which end they changed. Then practice some more until you can feel a 5-pound change with ease.   This slow-speed corner braking practice can be used daily on numerous corners you have picked out.