Sim Racing Setup Guide 08 – Brake Bias [Brake Balance]

hello fellow sand racers and welcome to part 8 of this sim racing setup guide today we're talking about break bus but if you've not seen any of the first seven parts of this series then a link to a playlist containing all of my setup videos should be in the top right hand corner of your screen [Music] the last few videos have contained quite a lot of information on what are fairly complex topics thankfully brake bias or brake balance is one of the more simple set up changes you can make to a car simply put adjusting

the brake balance changes the proportion of brake force sent to the front and rear wheels so why would you want to for example send more braking force to the front of the car than the rear well as we previously discussed as you brake low transfers towards the front of the car or perhaps more accurately the front tires experience more load than the rear and a tire that's placed under more load has more grip up to a point so that means that the front tires have more grip available to help the car decelerate conversely that also

means that when you're braking the rear tires have less grip which means that you can't apply as much braking force through them before they break traction so setting the brake bias is an important part of obtaining the most efficient use of the brakes and therefore stopping quicker but it can also be used to alter how the car behaves during what is one of the most critical parts of cornering the turning phase in almost every circumstance you'll either be breaking through the turning phase or transitioning off of the brakes at turning so it's easy to see

why the ratio of braking force sent to the front and rear tires would have an impact here in most racing Sims brake bias is expressed as a value between naught and a hundred which effectively represents the percentage of brake forces being sent to the front wheels so if the bias is set above 50 percent more brake pressure is being sent to the front wheels and vice versa in most sims this represents the proportion of braking power being sent to each axle measured at the master cylinder but the assetto corsa series of the old ones out

here and the brain pious reading actually represents the breaking force proportionate measured at the wheels there are up and down sides to both approaches and to be honest it's not a very useful discussion to have here what this means in practice for Sim racers is that brake bias settings in assetto corsa will be higher than in other sims for example the gt3 car in iRacing may have a brake bias setting of around 53 percent while in assetto corsa or ACC it's much more likely to be over 70 percent the amount of brake force being sent

to the front and rear may actually be the same in both cases but then measured in different places so what effect does this have on handling well as you move the brake bias towards the front of the car it will tend to be more stable under braking but the downside is that this will start to introduce turn in understeer conversely if you move the bias towards the rear the car will be less stable under braking particularly if you're not breaking in a straight line this can introduce turning oversteer as well but keep in mind that

there is an operating window in which the brakes are operating most efficiently and moving too far from the optimum point full length and braking zones and slow your lap times there's not too much more to it than that but there are a couple of useful tips to get you started first of all the general consensus is that you want the front wheels to start locking before there is this makes the cart much less of a handful when you're braking just past the limit if you're not sure what's happening you can use apps data readouts or

replays to see what's going on next up in my experience stock setups tend to have the Bray bar set in the right ballpark so if you're going to make changes then it's definitely a case of less is more and small changes should be all that's needed if you've watched on boards from any top racing series you may have seen drivers changing the brake bar several times a lap to eke out every last drop of performance available in the car and the reason for this is simple in a hard braking zone you may want more from

bias for stability while in other corners the understeer this will induce on turnin may well be undesirable this is advanced stuff but the best of the best are able to manipulate the brake bias throughout the lap to gain that final tenth while changing the bias multiple times per lap may be a bit beyond the scope of the average sim racer it is a useful tool during longer races having the ability to change the way a car behaves on turning from a cockpit is very useful indeed and it's something I'll often tweak throughout a longest stint

to help manage the tires or to change the behavior of the car as the fuel levels tires and the track evolve so to sum things up brake bias or brake balance settings control how your braking force is distributed to each axle and in most cases cars have their braking forces biased towards the front axle because these tires have more grip than the Rays do during braking changing the bias has an effect on your stopping distance and how the car behaves during corner entry and altering it from the cockpit during a race can be a very

useful tool so that's about all I have to say about brake balance in the next video we're going to talk about differentials and how they can be used to change the way your car since its power through to the tires I hope you enjoyed the video if you did then it would be great if you could hit the like button and subscribe to my channel and if you think the video will be helpful for others then please consider sharing it as always thank you for donating your precious free time by watching it is very much

appreciated so all that's left to say is goodbye thank you for watching and enjoy the rest of your day [Music]