How F1 Drivers Brake SO LATE

Formula 1 drivers are incredible at braking and most normal drivers are not that's because it's simply the most important and most difficult part of driving a fast car quickly it's the difference between the greats and the Noto greats but how are they actually generating more grip and higher cornering speeds using the brake pedal alone and why if you've been to a racing experience are they teaching you the wrong technique well let me explain breaking and Corner entry phase is the most difficult part of cornering for driv first up when they're braking there's a lot of

force going on they're braking it up to 6G and pushing the brake pedal with up to 150 kg of force and that's double what these guys weigh all done with one leg but it's not the physical stuff that's the most tricky it's the Precision and the feel the drivers need on that brake pedal when a driver is pushing that pedal as the car goes into the corner it could be the difference of tens of grams of pressure on the pedal that will make the car glide through the corner beautifully or under steer or over steer

off the track they need to be that precise and that's why these drivers need years of experience in carts and single seaters to be able to do this properly and it's why the average driver whether an amateur racing driver or someone doing a racing experience struggles to do this quite as well and that's why racing schools teach you a specific way to break but that way is wrong if you're trying to reach an ultimate lap time so let me explain a racing school will say only break in a straight line getting you to slow the

car down while you're in a straight line come off the brake pedal and then turn into the corner but that method will create lots of under steer in the car if you do that you're making the front of the car have less grip and you're never going to be able to match quick drivers that way that's actually why the racing schools teach in this way just think about what's going on with the car here you break and the front suspension compresses and the front tires are forced into the road even more giving you even more

grip but but then you just release the brakes quickly and the front suspension pops up releasing all that pressure and grip and giving you a car that's going to under steer the racing schools are trying to minimize the risk of you crashing their cars if you're under steering you're less likely to have a big shunt as under steer is more predictable and easier to correct for the driver so what are the pros doing well they're Trail breaking but Trail breaking is properly hard and there's a real risk of spinning if you don't quite get it

right and so the racing experience likely don't have the time to teach you this technique properly when I was coaching braking was where I spent a lot of time teaching people and there were six main mistakes they made in the braking phase firstly braking not hard enough because they're used to road driving secondly not using braking references and going into the corner at the wrong speeds third getting on the brakes gently and then ramping it up which makes it hard to predict your corner entry speed fourth releasing the brakes abruptly and too quickly giving the

car an imbalance of grip fifth crossing over the brake and the throttle and six trying to overuse engine braking so how should you be braking on track for reference here's a driver using the driving school method not overlapping braking and turning so getting all of the braking done in a perfectly straight line getting off the brakes and then turning into the corner and here's how you should do it and just see how much faster this is overall the car is the same and the racing line isn't that much different so why is it so much

faster it's down to how you're loading the tires through the braking Zone and into the corner when you jump off the brake suddenly you're unloading the front tires and as I mentioned before the car will likely under steer this often makes beginner drivers think that they're already over the limit of grip and the car can't go any faster because the car is already under steering but this isn't true in this example you're driving in a way that lowers the limit of grip and you could in fact Corner more quickly with the correct braking just look

at the difference here the top is me driving without any Trail braking look look at how much the front of the car jumps up when I get off the brakes then with proper Trail braking you can manage the weight coming up off the nose of the car through the corner meaning I have more front end grip when I need it and a more predictable car Trail braking in this way means there still some braking pressure on going deep into the corner so the front tires are still being pushed into the track for more grip where

I want it now of course you can take this too far so let's think about weight transfer again if you stay on the brakes too much or for too long you're going to be loading the front tires more giving you loads of grip for turning but the problem is when you load the front tires you're actually unloading the rears this is what drivers mean when they're talking about the balance of their cars so in this case they have more grip at the front of the car than at the rear so when they turn in all

is well but then the rear doesn't have enough grip to deal with the turning that you're asking for and so you likely spin let me know what you think about these simulator shots as it allows us to get lots of great angles and for me me to drive the right way and the wrong way to show you the difference now I'm showing you all of this with a Mazda because it's a soft car and the weight transfer is very pronounced but the same thing does happen in a Formula 1 car you just can't see it

as much because they're of course very stiff but in a Formula 1 car there are loads more things going on during the braking phase so how are the drivers so good at this firstly the drivers have a lot of tools that change the way the car brakes and rotates through a corner they have breake bias adjustments breake migration where the bias actually changes through the braking Zone as well as diff settings that change the way the rear axle behaves through a corner but we'll ignore that for now and assume the driver has those things the

way they want so the main big difference in a Formula 1 car is the downforce as when the driver first hits the brakes after a long straight they have loads of downforce on the car but as they go through the braking Zone and the car slows down it has less and less aerodynamic grip as the air speed over the car decreases so they have to break in a way that matches the downforce and so the grip level of the car and it's really hard to get used to at first it's one of the reasons that

drivers typically go through increasingly grippy cars as they progress through their careers but nothing prepares you for the ultimate grip of a Formula 1 car the first time that I stepped into an F1 car it was the breaking that was by far the most impressive I remember picking a braking spot and getting on the brakes and slowing down for the corner way too soon how late you could break was difficult to grasp at the beginning but of course after a few laps my brain was used to the braking forces and as normal you just end

up pushing the limits however in this Mazda I'm breaking with a more flat braking profile the car only has mechanical grip so its braking potential is the same at the start of the braking phase up to the point where I begin Trail braking so the brake Trace looks like this but Formula 1 driver's brake traces will look more like this with a massive Peak at the beginning of the braking and then actually releasing brake pressure somewhat this isn't them Trail bre braking this is actually down to the aerodynamic Force coming off the car because if

they remained at their Peak pressure the tires would lock up as the downforce decreased as the car has less grip as it slows so they hit the brake pedal hard and release pressure slightly but then at the end of the braking Trace is actually more similar to the Mazda where they're keeping some pressure on the pedal into the corner to keep the best balance of grip in the car but of course there's one more factor that comes into play here F1 drivers are doing all of this at incredible speeds so the skill needs to be

drilled into them it needs to be instinctive drivers who are best at doing this have incredible feel for the car and they can predict the balance of the car and adapt it really well remember they're not just making the most of the tires gri through one isolated Corner they're doing this through Each corner on each lap they're having to predict the circuit's changing grip the tires changing grip and the cars changing grip with things like changing fuel load there's a lot going on here not to mention when they're off the racing line or going 20

mph faster into a braking Zone because of a tow and DRS these drivers are really something else I saw something from George Russell last week where he was explaining that he'll use brake byas changes throughout the lap to match how the tires grip was changing from front to rear so for example at a circuit with lots of acceleration zones the rear tires have a really hard time they have a th000 horsepower going through them and so it's really easy to start overheating them throughout a l the rear tires are working harder in the acceleration zones

so when it comes to the braking Zone the rears actually have less grip to offer and with multiple traction zones this gets worse and worse over a lap so you then arrive at the braking Zone and the fronts have more grip than the rears so in order to maximize the braking phase you need to move that bias forward to the front as the front tires have more grip and so you can ask more breaking of them and George is changing this corner by corner like I said there's something else check out this video on the

weird racing lines that F1 drivers used thank you very much for watching and I'll catch you in the next one