Step Two - Braking Pressure and Release

This is difficult to consistently achieve, but your braking sensitivity will increase steadily with practice. It's also pretty difficult to describe so I'll show you how different braking techniques show up on our data, and hopefully it will be clear how you can replicate the technique.

The red line shows how the axle speed has much more drastically dropped below the GPS speed ie the actual speed of the kart. This shows a much higher degree of sliding under braking for the red line which under braking is still pretty effective. I've also popped in an example of an even higher degree of lock up in yellow. That's the sort of lock up that produces a strong kick at the rear of your kart.

Now, the yellow and red lines both slow the kart down very effectively, and you can even say the yellow 'big lock up' slows the kart even better than the others. However, the least aggressive of the 3 braking techniques gets all its time back when it comes to releasing the braking pressure and carrying speed through the corner.

With the more aggressive braking shown in yellow and red, the kart tends to be less predictable when it comes to releasing the brake pressure and persuading the kart to enter the corner. Sometimes it will snap back a little as the kart straightens whilst you release the brake, or as you try to start turning you might marginally overload the rear tyres and feel like the kart isnt happy to turn, so you continue to lose speed until you feel like the kart is back with you. The idea is that its difficult to bring the rear wheels from a heavy lock up situation, smoothly back to turning at a rate that matches the road speed of the kart, which is when they are ready to give you maximum cornering grip, and a feeling the kart is ready to turn in.

When as in the example of the green line, your braking wheels are turning at a speed closer to the speed of the kart, its easier to bring those wheels to match the speed of the kart (by releasing braking pressure), giving you maximum cornering power and most important.. a feeling that the kart is ready to turn and carry that bit more speed. You still have to have a slight locking of the rear tyres, enough that you can hear the rubber biting a squeaking, but the more you develop feel for the right amount of lock that you can control with subtlety, the more cornering speed you will carry.