How to Get Over the Fear of Hard Braking

We've all been in that situation where your mechanic or your coach tells you to brake later, brake harder — but maybe you're at the beginning of your career, maybe it's one of your first days on track, and you don't quite feel like doing it. Maybe you tried braking hard once, almost spun, and thought: not doing that again.

The reality is you have to build that confidence, and you have to overcome that scary moment by getting used to the feeling.

If you want to become the next world champion — in karting or in Formula 1 — you need to become the strongest driver on the grid on the brakes. There's no way around it.

Braking is a skill of its own. You cannot expect to become number one in the world for your age, in whatever category you drive, with poor braking.

Where you actually need it (and where you don't)

You need to use the brakes hard where it counts: the slow-speed corners you arrive at from high speed. That's where you smash and hold them.

In fast corners you won't need the brakes at all — you'll be flat out. In medium-speed corners you often won't need heavy braking either, maybe just a tap. So you only need to learn to brake hard and late in the corners that call for it. You don't want to be doing it everywhere. Which corner is which comes down to the corner types on your track.

Confidence is built, not switched on

To overcome the fear you go on a journey, pushing yourself session by session until you get accustomed to it.

Think about the first time you rode a bicycle. You weren't really riding it — they put those extra wheels on the sides so you couldn't fall, just so you'd pick up the confidence of going in a straight line without going down. Then, once you had it, my father would remove the extra wheels and hold me, then let me try alone. Of course I'd fall — but he stayed next to me, and before I hit the ground he'd pick me up.

You can't quite do that in karting. So expect that the feeling of hard braking, and the confidence that comes with it, will only arrive from trying repeatedly — harder and harder — and from expecting to make mistakes and expecting to spin. It isn't going to happen overnight.

You will never become confident braking hard and late if you stay inside your comfort zone. The comfort zone does not turn new drivers into champions.

And honestly, that's the fun part. What's fun about going slowly and not pushing? You get the adrenaline from pushing the limit and carrying a lot of speed into corners. You don't get it from being slow on the entries — which is also how overslowing starts.

Fear is a handbrake

There are two skills you almost need to be born with, and everything else is built on top of them: fearlessness and coachability. I've written about both of them in depth, so I'll keep it short here — but the fear of braking sits squarely inside the first one.

I see kids at three years old going out on motorbikes and quads, doing stunts, throwing themselves down hills on skis. That's basically what I used to do. I was quite frenetic, quite fearless, and honestly I think it helped me a lot — I wouldn't be afraid of a dive bomb from ten meters back, or of going for a double overtake almost casually. That comes from confidence and fearlessness.

If you're afraid of speed, of crashing, of getting hurt, of spinning, of rolling over — all those fears make it very hard to push your limits.

Fear is like a handbrake. It really is.

But I'm not saying that if you feel afraid of braking you don't have what it takes. You can build the skill. Some kids naturally have no fear; others do have fears, and it's about breaking them down and finding a way to win them.

The mechanism: exposure therapy

Plenty of kids are afraid of the dark, of thieves, of snakes or spiders. All sorts of fears — and you can work on them. The way you win a fear is almost always by experiencing the thing you're afraid of.

Afraid of snakes? Go somewhere with pet snakes, hold them, look at them, and you acclimatize until the fear is gone. Afraid of the dark? Stay in the dark long enough to see that nothing happens. That's exposure therapy, and it's the most efficient way to beat a fear.

So if you're afraid of braking hard, expose yourself to braking hard and see what actually happens.

The drill: one day, no stakes

Here's the practical version. Go out on a random test day — ideally one that's nearly empty, open pit lane, completely relaxed. No pressure, no racing, no championship at stake. This is exactly the kind of session that deserves a single clear purpose.

• Go into the heavy braking zones and lock the brakes — as hard and as late as you possibly can.
• Make sure you can stop the kart. If you spin, fine. That's what the day is for.
• Have a coach or mechanic there pushing you to brake as hard as you physically can.
• Ignore your lap times completely. They'll be much slower. You don't care.

You're going to spin sometimes. Worst case you find the barriers, which is genuinely hard to do in that situation. And you'll notice something: every spin, every scare, gets less scary than the one before. That's the fear breaking down in real time.

If you don't have track access, you can practice the feeling somewhere private and safe — a big open space, an abandoned area, a warehouse — as long as you can build up real speed first, because arriving slowly teaches you nothing. Not on public roads; that's illegal and I'm not suggesting it.

Chase the lock

It gets fun later on, and you start to chase it — the moment the rear tires lock.

When you lock them, it means you braked at the highest pressure the grip level allowed. You're maximizing the brakes and the grip available.

That's the most you can do in that moment. And if you do end up spinning, look closely at why, because the problem usually isn't your braking force at all. It's that you're not braking straight: you brake hard, you hear the tires lock, you panic, and you turn the steering. That's what spins you. Keep it straight, hold the brake, and it doesn't happen. The underlying technique and deceleration efficiency are worth understanding alongside this.

What it buys you

You need to become a monster on the brakes if you want to become a world champion — the latest, hardest braker on the grid. That gains you lap time on the entries, and it makes overtaking effortless. It also lets you defend, not by closing the line, but simply because you're so late on the brakes that people struggle to get near you.

You want to be such a late braker that people watch and think: how is he even doing that? How is he able to stop it?

After one or two days of this drill, you'll become a monster. I'm sure of it. And you'll end up laughing at yourself a bit — how could I have been afraid of braking hard? At first we all have these fears, then we get used to them, and in hindsight it feels silly. But everybody has their own fear, and everybody has to break past it.

It's the unknown that scares us. Once it's not unknown any more, it stops being scary.

Once you've experienced heavy braking and you know the effects — you know the rear tires lock, you know you keep the steering straight, you know you hold the brake — you also know nothing bad happens. After a while it's just fun.

Then check it in the data

You can see all of this in PURPL's braking section: your max brake G, your braking distance, and your braking-point repeatability. Those three are also questions six and seven on my post-session checklist, so you can watch the fear turning into numbers session by session.

So go out there, do your exposure therapy, and accept whatever happens. Honestly, you should be happy if you spin a lot on the brakes — it means you're really braking hard.

Sign up to PURPL for free, let me know how it goes, and always remember to keep sending it. Ciao.