How Much Should You Trail Brake? By Corner and By Class

Trailing the brakes feels more like an art than a science, because you can't overly try to coach or teach some driver the way to trail brake. It's more of a skill that needs to be learned through practice, and by repeatedly pushing themselves, pushing their limits, pushing their braking points. And by doing that, automatically they will end up trailing the brakes, because that is the only option if they don't want to miss the corner, or even worse, if they don't want to go in the wall. So of course, that is the only option.

I mean, think about it. Trailing the brakes is all about holding the brakes, but it really feels like a necessity. You need to hold the brakes because that's the only way to stop the kart. And then, naturally, automatically, without even thinking too much about that, it happens that the driver progressively comes off the brakes. But it happens in a fraction of a second, 0.1, 0.2 seconds, who knows. The driver is not aware, it's not conscious.

Why nobody can tell you exactly when to release

If you ask me, "oh Alessio, how are you releasing the brakes going into the corner," I'm telling you, I don't know, I'm just doing it. And I don't want to overcomplicate it, it's just about going out there and doing it. If I try to tell you, "oh, you know, as soon as you feel that the rear wheel is lifting up, that's when you have to come off the brakes," no, it's gonna be bullshit, and I will just be talking for nothing. I will just try to sound clever and smart, but that's not the way. I mean, I'm here to literally help you out about becoming a professional racing driver.

And in order for you to become a professional racing driver, you need to feel. You can't become a robot. Robots just do what they're told, they don't really improvise. So you really got to adapt yourself to the conditions. But it's all about braking as late and as hard as you possibly can, and trailing the brakes, because that is the only option if you do not want to miss the corner.

And yes, it obviously changes from corner to corner. You can't do that in a fast corner. In a fast corner you may just have to tap the brakes, or I mean, maybe you must do it flat out. So it obviously depends from corner to corner, you won't be doing this technique everywhere. You may only have to do the trail braking technique only in three, four corners in the whole lap. But it's clear that you are aware that, as a racing driver, I expect you to not be told how to be doing it but to feel it.

Of course, if you go out and do the first sessions in a new track and you check your data, you open PURPL and you see, okay, comparing to my other teammate who's a bit faster in that specific corner, is holding the brakes a little bit longer than me, is trailing the brakes a little bit longer than me. Okay, so it means I can brake a bit later, and I can hold the brakes a bit more, so I can just brake later, stop more efficiently, and get the same exit. Okay, fine. Or maybe to the opposite, you may see that, oh, I am already trying to brake too late and trailing the brakes a bit too much, but I won't be able to stop enough for the apex. So either I have to brake even more efficiently and even more aggressively, or maybe I have to just bring the braking a bit earlier so I can get a better exit. Or maybe, you know, you're doing another mistake, you are braking the right place but you're stopping too much the kart, because you're trailing the brakes too much in a medium speed corner, which may not require that much of a braking.

The rule of thumb, by corner type

Okay, so what I normally have as a rule of thumb, guys, and hear me out, is that irrespective of whatever class you're driving, in the slow speed corner you want to trail the brakes a lot, and it almost has to feel like you're trailing the brakes until the apex. That's the rule of thumb. But in medium speed corners you need to come off the brakes before the apex, quite a bit before, so you need to feel like you're, you know, getting on the throttle a bit before the apex, and therefore you need to be off the brakes. Got it? So in slow corners you want to arrive and hold the brakes and trail the brakes more into the corner, especially if you're coming at a high speed and you need to stop the kart very efficiently in a heavy braking zone.

Of course, if you're arriving at slow speed and there's no real straight beforehand, then of course you won't have to trail the brakes that much, you may just have to tap the brakes. You know, it obviously depends, that's the real world. But then again, if I said medium speed corner, you want to trail brake probably a little bit shorter, and keep up with the momentum in the mid-corner. And in the fast corners you basically don't have to trail the brakes at all. If you do tap the brakes, it's just a tap, you know, it's not a smash, and it's for sure not a trail. If you're in a fast corner you may not even have to use the brakes, you may have to just make a lift, or you may just have to be flat. So that's kind of the rule of thumb.

Shifter karts trail the most

Of course, from category to category it may change. If you ask me, in terms of karting class, the karts that are required to use the brakes the most, and to trail the brakes the most, I would say, are shifter karts, so the KZs, because they obviously have front brakes as well as rear brakes. And okay, you normally run like a 60/40 brake bias, or even 65/35, so mostly on the fronts than the rear, 65 on the front, 35 on the rear, sometimes even more. In cars you are normally at 58, 59 percent, but in karting you do normally run more on the fronts than the rears, because on the rears it typically ends up locking your rear tires a bit, and you don't want to have that, because it causes a bit of instability, and almost like you can't really stop as efficiently. So you don't want to really have too much rear locking, you want more of a front locking, that's the dry weight normally.

But anyways, going back to it, you want to make sure that you take advantage of the front brakes, because you are being given them, and you know, you should take advantage of them, because you can't really ever quite get to lock the fronts, it's quite rare. Sometimes you can, if there's really low grip conditions and your brakes are really good, but otherwise, if there's a lot of grip, you won't lock up the brakes that much. But anyways, the whole point is that with a shifter kart, especially in hairpins, you're going to be doing more of a V line, in terms of shape, okay, and also in terms of speed. So you're going to brake really late, and you're going to stop more in the mid-corner, in terms of a minimum speed, compared to a single-speed kart, like an X30 junior or an X30 senior, or any junior or senior kart, because they need to keep up the momentum, so their minimum speed is always going to be quicker than yours, obviously, as a shifter kart driver. But of course, you can take advantage of those brakes, you need to take advantage of the brakes, and of course the exit will be also quite tighter on the exit in the slow corners, because you need to take advantage of the gears, the traction, all the torque that you have.

So yeah, as a rule of thumb, normally with the KZ you have to hold the brakes pretty much until the apex, okay, not past the apex, that would be silly, because right at the apex you also want to be on the throttle. So it has to be a very fast transition between off the brakes, on the gas, okay, so it has to be really, really fast, that transition. And the thing is that you also want to keep the load in, to get more rotation, because remember, in a KZ you're making the corner quite narrow, as I said, in this slow corner, because you're tightening the corner up in the mid-corner. So you gotta make sure the car rotates quite fast and aggressively, so that you can straighten up and get a good exit. In order for you to do that faster, you gotta use more brakes, because when you use the brakes and you trail them until the end, you're basically putting weight at the front.

You know, I mean, it's like you are putting weight, transitioning the weight forward, because I mean, there's a lot of weight transition when you brake, the weight is shifting forward, and actually the front is lowering, and when you throttle, the weight shifts backwards, and actually the rear lowers. So it's really a big difference in this kind of transition. So when you trail the brakes into the apex, you're gonna get the nose of the front being lower, you're gonna get more weight transfer to the front, you're gonna get more front, the rear will unload a bit, so there's gonna be more rotation, which is what you need in a KZ, really. So yeah, that's really pretty important. You know, since there's that much of a transition, you need to take advantage of that braking and holding the brakes into the end.

Where the time actually goes: a KZ against a senior kart

You can gain a lot of time on the brakes. For example, if you put a senior kart and a KZ shifter kart, and you put them on the same track, like at Lonato, you will see on the data that the shifter kart is gonna be able to brake a lot later, even though it's gonna lose in the mid-corners, for sure the senior is gonna go faster than the KZ, for sure, because it has way less weight, and obviously with less weight you can carry more speed, so I'm sure they are gonna carry a lot more speed, and also their lines are more open, of course, so they can carry way more speed at the apex. But the KZ needs to gain on the entry, because if the KZ does not gain on the entry by using the brakes, it's actually going to end up being slower than the senior kart, even though on paper it's a much faster kart.

I mean, not much faster, I mean, from the OK senior that does the world championships etc, it's going to be roughly like half a second, it shouldn't be more than that, to be honest, depends obviously on the track conditions, and also from track to track, sometimes they actually get matched by OK seniors. But yeah, in very fast tracks the KZ car is going to take advantage of their gears, the power. In the very twisty tracks actually it's mostly going to be the senior which is going to be quicker. But again, it all depends also on how many braking spots you have. If you have a lot of braking spots, the senior kart is going to struggle from the KZ, because the KZ can gain quite a lot. So you gotta make sure that, as a shifter kart, you're using a lot the brakes and holding them until the apex, because you got them, you gotta use them.

Single-speed karts: momentum changes the trade

Now the senior karts and the juniors and the 60 minis are a different animal, of course. Their goal is more about momentum in the mid-corner. So if you gain one meter of entry braking point but you sacrifice too much minimum speed and exit, well, that's not a really good trade-off for a 60 mini kart, for example, because of course it's all about momentum. You have 10 horsepower, and if you gain a tenth on the entry but you lose two on the exit because your mid-corner is too low, your RPMs are dead, of course it's not a really good trade-off. You know what I mean? Equally, you don't want to start to do the slow-in fast-out technique.

I mean, I hate that technique. Unfortunately, lots of coaches preach that slow-in fast-out technique, but the goal is to be fast-in fast-out. So you gotta stop really late on the brakes, but make sure you stop and make the apex, so you can get a really good exit too. So that's pretty much the technique, of course, in the single-speed karts. But what I mean with stop, I'm not saying you have to stop like a KZ, pay attention. When I'm saying stop it just means you have to make the apex, but I'm not saying you have to stop in terms of a speed. Okay, so that's pretty much what I'm saying, it's like you need to stop so that you can make the apex, but you don't want to stop so that your minimum speed and RPMs are too low.

Because in that case your momentum will be just dead, and you'd have no exit speed. And that's the case also in juniors and seniors, that's why, for example, when drivers are overtaking or defending, they lose a ton of time, because I mean, they don't have the momentum to keep up in the middle of the corners if they make a tight entry or a tight exit. You know, KZs, when they're defending the lines, they don't really lose much, they may lose only like a tenth defending a corner properly. Whereas a junior or senior or mini, if they defend a corner, they may lose even three, four tenths, or even half a second, because they don't have the gears, they don't have the brakes to take advantage of that V-shaped line. So if they have to make that V-shaped line, they will kill the momentum, they will lose so much time, and so that's why they don't do that in a qualifying lap, it would be silly for them to do it.

But yeah, that's the clear distinction, for sure, in the single-speed karts it's all about momentum, so you may have to come off the brakes just a touch earlier, so you may have to trail a touch less than a shifter kart. But again, we're talking about very, very little difference, and you can't quite tell in advance, it has to be felt. That's what I opened at the beginning of this guide, basically, you have to feel it, it's an art, not a science. You don't want to become a robot where you get told what to do. And even then, even if you would get told what to do by a coach, I think it would probably be lying to you, because it's not really possible to tell exactly, with precision, where you have to come off the brakes. It's just going to be an assumption, it's just going to be like a rule of thumb. But you can't just tell, "oh, you gotta take off the gas at 637 meters on the track," you know, or, "you gotta get off the brakes four meters before the apex." How do you even measure four meters? I mean, you can't, you can maybe talk about kart lengths, but even then, at such a fast speed, you can't really tell. You can't even say, "oh, you have to wait 1.3 seconds after you brake, and then you come off the brakes." I mean, it doesn't make sense. It's all about feeling, that it's more of an art than a science. We can give you, let's say, the direction, but then you go out there and find the route, you find the solution, you find the optimal technique for your specific session, track condition, and specific setup balance. No one else will be able to be driving the kart at your place and be able to feel what you feel, because the track condition may be weird, your kart condition may be weird, so everything may be feeling different than the coach may feel.

Use the brakes as a balance tool

So that's why I don't like just generalizing. Obviously, the drivers are there to adapt themselves, and they will always have, I'm sure, specific scenarios where they have, you know, to brake maybe a little bit more into the corner and trailing the brakes a bit more, or maybe they have to trail brakes a bit less, because of their setup.

Of course, if you have understeer a lot, what would you have to do? Do you think you would have to be off the brakes earlier, or do you think you have to load the front more? Now, of course, it depends if you're oversaturating the front tires. In that case, you may have to actually be off the brakes a bit earlier. But if that's not the case, and it really works to load the front tire, and the front, you know, because of the weight transfer, then in that case it just works so much to carry more entry speed, getting the car to be loaded on the front, and that generates really good rotation. Conversely, if you have a lot of oversteer, what would work better is to trail the brakes a touch less, so that the front kind of raises back up, the rear picks up a bit of weight and more load, so that you will have a little bit more stability.

So that's the thing, you can really play a lot with your setup balance based on your driving. Once you're getting good enough, you will get a ton of understanding of how you should drive it, so you have an idea also how to adapt. So yeah, you should always take care of that and use the braking as a tool. That's really the thing.

Of course, in an ideal world, the setup is the same, the chassis is the same, the track is the same, and you can drive the same every time, but that's not how it works, that's just a fairytale. How it works is that you go out there, the track changes, the grip level of the kart changes, you know, everything changes, the tires get more consumed, unless you start with new tires, and so you have to adapt. That's it, you gotta adapt, and your braking can really be used as a tool, because when you have no front, or not enough rotation, you can attack the brakes more deeply and trail the brakes more aggressively into the apex, so that you can get more rotation and carry more speed as well, and that's gonna help you quite a bit with the balance.

Conversely, if you have a bit of oversteer, you can try to be a little bit less aggressive in the entry, so that in the trailing maybe you will be trailing a bit less, and in the mid-corner you will be a touch earlier off the brakes, and you can rebalance the rear and load the front, and again really have a good corner. So you can still get the same lap time with two setups being quite different, two balances being quite different, and overall I'm pretty sure you can manage to get an optimal lap time despite different setups configuration, or different cars altogether.

Then go and look at it

So make sure you log into PURPL, start having a look at your brake traces, as well as the trail braking, there's a specific channel just for that, so you can have an idea, oh, I've trail braked quite a bit, that's cool, or, oh no, I didn't trail brake at all, I need to trail brake more. So you can have an idea, and even just by comparing it against yourself, you get an idea. If you could compare against somebody else that would be good too, but if you can't, just keep going like that. I'm sure you will find a lot of lap time by yourself.

So sign up to PURPL for free for the first 20 sessions, let me know how it goes, you can DM me on Instagram, and then also make sure to keep sending it. Ciao.