Braking in the Wet: Harder, Not Softer

Everybody thinks that in the rain you have to drive very carefully and brake very cautiously. That couldn't be further from the truth.

In the wet you need to be more aggressive on the brakes than in the dry, and more skilled with them. Let me explain why, and then let me tell you what mistake the cautious advice is actually covering up.

The wet turns every corner into a braking corner

On a dry day at an average Italian track you might have two or three genuinely major braking spots. Most of the corners are medium or high speed, where you need no brakes at all or just a tap.

In the wet, all those medium-speed corners become real heavy braking corners.

Here's why. Yes, your approach speed is lower, because you couldn't carry speed out of the previous corner either. That's part of why you're 12, 15, even 20 seconds off the dry pace, sometimes more, depending on the track and how much rubber is laid down. But your minimum speed drops much further still.

At a track like Lonato, the difference between wets and slicks is roughly 15 to 20 km/h less minimum speed at the apex.

And to arrive at a minimum speed that much lower, you're certainly not going to coast and roll the speed off by lifting early on the straight. You have to use the brakes, and use them for longer than in the dry.

Efficiency, not peak force

This is where most drivers get it wrong, and it isn't a wet-specific point, it's just amplified by the wet.

It's not about how hard you brake. It's about how efficiently you brake. You can stamp them once, hard, and come straight off, and be inefficient. In that case you'd be better off braking 20% less in terms of peak force, and holding it for longer.

It's not the peak braking force, and it isn't even how late you brake. The intensity plays a big factor, but it's mostly how long you hold the brakes, or how long you trail them into the apex. That's really the thing.

You cannot expect to be a fast driver in the wet without trailing the brakes. Not tapping them and coming off. Smashing them and holding them deeply into the apex, so you actually stop the kart. How far to trail depends on the corner and your class.

Rotation is the real prize

In the wet you're hunting grip constantly: on the brakes, in the mid-corner, on traction. And most drivers spend the bulk of their lost time in the mid-corner and in the braking zones.

But the mid-corner only goes understeery if you didn't use the brakes properly on the entry. That's the link nobody makes.

Braking deep and holding keeps the front loaded, and that means a lot of weight transfer rearward to forward. There's a pitch to the front, a dive. The front lowers, the rear lifts slightly, and you get a kind of rake, that front-low rear-high asymmetry that matters so much in formula cars. The rake creates the load forward, and the load creates the rotation.

Which is exactly what you're short of. In the wet you're always struggling for front grip, and you can see it in how much steering angle you need compared to the dry. The chain runs like this:

• The track is slippery, so you carry less speed.
• Less speed means less weight transfer, and less momentum into the corner.
• No momentum means the kart doesn't rotate.
• No rotation means you steer more, which makes it worse.

Since momentum isn't on your side in the wet, the only way to get rotation is the brakes. Hold them properly to the apex, keep the front loaded.

The mistake the "brake softly" advice is hiding

Now the part that actually matters, and it's the reason all that cautious paddock advice exists.

You cannot brake on the rubber.

If you brake where everybody brakes on slicks, on the rubbered-in line, you're going straight on. And if you do brake hard there, you'll spin. So a driver tries the aggressive technique, spins, and gets told to brake softer. Braking soft on the rubber is a bandage. It isn't fixing the core problem.

The core problem is that the driver is braking on the wrong piece of track. In the wet, the right place is toward the middle of the track, or even slightly tighter, so you avoid the rubber. Since everyone opens the corners up on a dry line, that rubber sits toward the outside edge, so your braking line moves in. It depends where the rubber is laid on your specific track, so go and look.

If you're braking on the rubber, you're shooting yourself in the foot. And then you tell me: Alessio, you said brake hard and lock the tires, but I keep spinning. That doesn't surprise me at all. You're applying the right technique in the wrong place.

It's like trying to ski in the ocean. You can't ski in the ocean, and you can't surf in the mountains. Right technique, wrong place.

At some point in the corner you will have to cross that rubber line, and that's fine. Ideally you're already rotated and into the mid-corner phase when you join it, not still on the brakes. Understanding where the rubber goes down and how it evolves is what makes this a decision rather than a guess.

Cold discs, and a cheap fix

A setup point I hadn't planned to make, but it matters more in the wet than anywhere else.

In the rain your brakes are cold, and they stay cold. Even though you brake more, and even though braking occupies a larger percentage of a wet lap than a dry one, the disc still cools hard down the straights, especially with standing water and aquaplaning.

Cold disc means cold pads, which means much less braking efficiency. I'm not joking about the difference. Even on slicks on a summer day, it can take a lap or two out of the pit lane before the brakes are at their proper temperature. You should notice that yourself.

The fix is a brake duct, a protection around the disc, and you can make it yourself out of old plastic number plates. Wrap it around the disc so it can't cool down, especially in heavy rain. It makes a real difference.

Lines by class, and the distance equation

Different categories want different wet lines.

60 Mini: most of the time you'll open the lines up through the mid-corner, because with ten horsepower the RPM and the momentum have to stay up.

X30 and Rotax junior and senior: you'll often cut over the kerbs and make tighter lines. You lose a little minimum speed, but you cover so much less distance that it pays.

Time is distance divided by speed. Highest speed, but also the least distance.

So if you notice you're covering a lot of extra distance and not gaining any speed for it, that's a no-brainer: go tighter. It pays off above all in sequences of corners that change direction, a right then a left, chicane-like but more spread out, with no long straight to reward the wider line. There's more on this in reading your data in the wet, which covers how to see the distance side rather than guess it.

KZ and shifters: you can really smash the brakes and lock the tires. You want to arrive in a constant state of sliding, driving outside the friction circle, beyond the optimum slip angle, all the time. That warms the tires too, which matters because wet tires are normally very hard and take a long time to come up to temperature. Driving aggressively is the only real way to get heat into them, and it happens to be the fastest way as well, because it twists and rotates the kart. In a shifter you can hold the brakes right into the apex. In juniors and seniors you'll come off slightly earlier and roll a touch of speed to the apex.

Hooking the kerb

In the wet, the apex is often the kerb itself, if you're going over it to cut distance. Hook it properly and you get rotation and a shorter lap at the same time.

But the hook has to be right. Hook too early and you get pushed wide. Miss it and you lose a lot of time, because you end up out on the rubber. And here's the connection back to braking:

If you come off the brakes too early, you overshoot the kerb that was supposed to hook you. So hold the brakes until that kerb.

Go and do it

Driving in the wet is my favourite thing in the sport. It's creative, and any day I can go out in the rain is pure pleasure, because you really get to experience the kart on the limit.

It's also where I won a lot. A WSK final in KZ at Adria, a Trofeo Margutti at Lonato, a few Italian championship rounds including one at Lonato with something like 15 or 16 seconds over P2. So I know a thing or two about it, and I did it at the highest level.

If you want to win, you have to be the latest braker on the grid, and that's a skill you train. Start by staying off the rubber. If you brake on it you'll go straight, you'll spin, and you'll conclude the mistake was braking hard. It wasn't. The mistake was the place.

The braking fundamentals hold in the rain, the wider wet technique covers line, throttle and mindset, and if stamping the pedal is what scares you, that fear is beatable. Senndit's wet driving tips are a good companion read.

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