Braking technique

‘Get the rear brakes doing more work and the car stops sooner’

LAST MONTH WE LOOKED AT steering, specifically corner entry and the ‘soft introduction’ – the way we gently lead the car into the corner with a subtle input over the first five per cent of the turn: the first half of that at a quarter of the eventual effort, the second half at three-quarters effort. It’s all about transferring the weight – and the same applies to braking.

If you apply the brakes in this manner the car will stop better, because it introduces the pads to the discs and puts the weight through to the tread of the tyres in the most harmonised way.

Think of it like this: give a glass of water a jab and it’ll spill, but give it a progressive nudge and it won’t. That’s the same as your relationship with the road’s surface – you can have a juddery relationship, but with a harmonised one the car is less likely to move around in the braking zone, and it’ll stop in a shorter distance.

Remember that the rear brakes come in a fraction later than the fronts, so this way when the nose has only just started to dip, the rears are already working before the back of the car rises up in the air. You might be taking a fraction longer to get to maximum pressure, but because you’ve got the rears doing more work, the car stops sooner.

At this point, although you may be staring death in the face under race conditions, you’ve got to separate the fear from the feeling. After a while you’ll get confident, and be able to tell from the very first part of the braking area that you’re going to stop OK.

It’s an analogue thing, but it’s easier to see the benefit than with the steering technique we talked about, because you either stop or you don’t.

Rob tutors aspiring racing drivers and current professional racers