Warning: This is the sort of stuff I get into with drivers after I've done everything I can with normal coaching. If you are still a relative novice or are looking for seconds a lap please read my other braking articles first. You will need 100% confidence whilst braking for this tutorial, so that all your mental energy is free to make the subtle driving adjustments necessary to make this work.

How to find a tenth of a second with braking technique into sharp bendsusing Mychron4 with GPS

Right, we analysed a lot of data collected using AiM data acquisition to study the fastest way round the hairpin at the end of the long straight at Whilton Mill. Our driver, who on the day was hitting laps close to the lap record, approached the corner using different braking techniques. One technique in particular was a tenth quicker than the rest. I'll spell it out to you here step by step so you can do it yourself.

We tested the following techniques in as many combinations as possible, to find the ultimate way through that sector of race track.

*Early braking for faster exit
*Late braking for fast entry
*Hard braking with locking rear wheels
*Soft braking with zero locking
*Medium braking with semi lock
*Release brake pressure fully before turn in
*Carry braking deep into corner

Here is the combination that worked best, its very very tricky to do, but was worth a tenth on one corner compared to other very effective techniques, which is worth a hell of a lot of money at this level!

Step one – Braking Point

The ideal braking point was found by our driver using the latest braking point he could manage without missing his apex, and then braking 1 or 2 metres earlier than that. That's what I mean by breaking slightly early

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.

Step Three - Throttle

Studying the throttle trace held a bit of a surprise. On first inspection you can see that the red line which is the slower of the two, gets onto the throttle earlier. The quicker green line gets on the throttle slightly later but reaches maximum slightly earlier. Now, so they say – the guy who gets on the throttle earlier is quicker..... not wholly true, which is confirmed in the throttle position article

This is because on the slower lap the driver was anxious to get back on the throttle early because he was aware that he had lost some cornering speed at the apex, and in trying to get it back he pushes a bit too hard and the rear tyres give up a little. You can see on the slip trace that the red line is higher than the green, revealing a slight amount of wheel-spin. The feeling of slight traction loss caused our driver to hesitate a bit on throttle application which cost a bit more time.

We've gone through a similar process at every corner at Whilton Mill, and our data has revealed that we should find another half second at least, so we expect our pace to be significantly below the lap record next time out. I'll let you know how it goes!!

If you want to find time easily like this, you can plug in the AiM GPS straight into the Mychron 4 and get started immediately.