There’s one technique that, unfortunately, many young drivers do, and they do it subconsciously. Most of them, they don’t do it really consciously. They do it, and they’re not really aware of that. And that technique is throttle and brake at the same time. It’s basically double pedaling. Call it however you want, braking gas, we we have a saying that in in our in our team, we put our we put on the drivers that have this issue. The “brake and gas” system basically prevents the driver to do 100% brakes or 100% gas. So basically is a system that prevents, literally, the driver to double pedal, but it still will allow double pedal if the driver does like 50% gas and 50% brakes. It’s just impossible to to prevent that completely, but it does do a little bit of a help. But here’s the thing, karts are not made. You know, go, karts are not made to brakes and gas at the same time. There is no reason for that. You know, this is your little karts. Amazing drawing from Alessio. Yes, I’m the best drawer in the world. Just kidding. Your kart is literally not made to to brake and accellerate at the right time, at the same time, because and also your tires, by the way, this is so there’s a concept called the traction circle, okay? And the traction circle basically says that you can combine. So this is red land. This is longitudinal, long, and this is the lateral, Okay, oops, I lost my mouse connection. So that’s my lateral, so when it’s going to so this is basically you probably have seen this. This called the detraction circle. It almost looks like that. Almost looks like like this. So basically it says that when you brake this, your maximum braking is your maximum acceleration. All right, when you brake, you can do a little bit of combine. It’s called like combined. So when you’re turning, braking and turning into the corner, this is where you’re going to be, probably you’re going to be in this area. So let me change the color. You’re going to be here in this overlapping area, so you’ll be somewhere here. All right. If you are throttling and turning, you’re going to be here, okay, if we’re turning, this is right, but that’s when we turn into the left. When we turn to the left, the basically this, yeah, the traction circle is just being used here. To the right, when we turn to the right is going to be to the left. Okay, so when we are braking and turning to the to the right, to the left, we’re going to have this when we accelerate. So this is basically an attraction circle, okay, you’re like, Oh, what the hell is that? Basically, that is the combination of all the forces that are allowed on the racing tire. So, as you can see, it’s impossible. It’s not it’s not a square, right? It is not like that. It is not like that. If it was like that, you could brake and turn so much more. If it was like that, you could brake and turn so much more. You could have 100% braking and 100% turning. You could have 100% acceleration and under percent steering wheel right and the kart the tires would sustain all of that. There would be so much faster. But it’s not like that. You know, the rules of the games are not that. The rules of the games are this. So it allow the tires allow a limited amount of braking and turning, a limited amount of throttling and turning to one side and braking and turning to the other side and throttle and turn to the other side. So you see the tire cannot at the same time as and it doesn’t make sense if you ask the interaction.

So circle to here. So here’s the braking.

So maximum braking and maximum acceleration at the same time, it makes, it makes really no sense, absolutely no sense. So you should, you should not do that. So that’s the simple answer, all right. But of course, drivers do it, and before they do it for multiple reasons, you know. So it’s like, here with your left foot, and here with your right foot, you’re trying to basically go on the full gas, and maybe you’ll feel like it’s a little bit not sure that that you’re going to make the corner, because maybe you go wide. And so many drivers do, or instead of coming off the gas, they put some brakes on. Or when they’re braking, they, I don’t know, for some reason they they feel comfortable with a little bit of throttle and they brake, and it keeps some throttle, but it makes no sense. You know, all of this, all of this, is just deadly. It’s just disaster for the performance. And I will explain to you in a second by. But, but it’s very, very important that, well, actually, let me clear this up.

It’s very, very important

for you to, I want to clear this up because I don’t like, I like the attraction circle bit. I want to remove the Yeah. So yeah. I want you to to visualize this. We are a French accord, two drivers the I mean, actually, it’s the same driver in two different sessions at the WSK, and you can see that on the exit. For some reason, the driver is at 92% throttle, not full, but he has 25% brakes. And now that is not an extreme amount of braking gas. We have seen way more. I couldn’t find the example, like more of extreme ones, so I just show you this one, which is still quite, quite bit. And you can see that the driver is pretty much full throttle, but he still keeps the brakes, and he’s past the apex already. So that makes no sense, right? To have 25 26% of brakes past the apex. So the only reason why he’s doing that is because he’s trying to control the speed, so he’s going in the gas, and he’s trying to control the speed with the brakes instead of coming off the wheel throttle. So for me, this is deadly. This is very bad. But it’s not just the only issue, right? That’s the biggest problem. You know that I have noticed in drivers doing braking gas, because when you do so, especially with minis, you’re gonna overheat the engine so much, because you when you do like that, you overheat the engine so much, the engine has to make more effort. And so when the engine gets too hot, it gets too lean, you just stop driving like stop being fast all together. It’s just, as I say, it dies, and it’s your fault. If it dies, it’s not his fault, same, another, another. Well, I can see this other mistake in the other corner. For example, here he is almost flat out. He has 98 93% throttle, and he has 8% of brakes. You can see here is not huge, but it’s still. It’s still a thing. It’s still and here also is very bad exiting this corner over here, you can see that he is pretty much full throttle, 91% and he also has 20% brakes, again, disaster. And he also has this better habit a bit out of the last corner, which is not that big, to be honest, but as it’s mostly in those corners I’ve just mentioned. And the other major problem, the other major issue, from, from, from this technique, from brake and gas technique is not just in the exit, but it’s also in the mid corner, right.

Have a look:

So in the mid corner, I can see that the driver has got like 97% of the brake, and he’s got, what, 17 89% throttle. Same here. He’s got 18% throttle and 100% brake. So this is a problem. And you can’t be like, Oh, Alessio, there’s a spike, no, because he got down to 13% there, or it got down too much slower here. It got down to so you could be, oh, that’s the calibration. Is not right, believe me, the calibration was right. So when he’s taking off, the gas is not fully of the gas. It’s just 20% that’s a problem, because when you do so, the the carburetor is not working properly. And if the carburetor is not working properly, the it’s not fully down the valve, and so it keeps injecting air when under braking, which is not needed, you know. And that’s bad, because it keeps the it makes the engine to lean basically, and it just doesn’t help it to to recharge a fuel necessary to get fast on the exit, to get the right amount of fuel. So, yeah, you have to be careful with these things. Unfortunately, many drivers do, and it’s mostly out of habits I heard I and, you know, if I look at the data and I and I describe it myself, even though I’ve I, if I try to charge a data, you need to make sure when you are on the brakes, okay, you need to be 100% off the gas here. From here to here, you need to be under percent off the gas, only braking from here to here, okay, from here to here, only braking and on the exit, only throttle. All right, you don’t want to be double pedaling ever, please. It’s for you. But unfortunately, if you don’t fix this now, guys, you’re gonna keep this all the way into Formula cars. You see here, it should be instead of like that. Let me actually clear, like, change the color, instead of being like that. You should be like, palm 100% off the gas, and then you go on the gas, and you go 100% right, and on the exit, the brakes should be zero, not, not like 10% 20% as we saw in the previous corner, right? It’s not the way to be. It should be 100% brakes on the corner, or 90% it depends, depend on the on the corner. Of course, you were talking about a hairpin. We want to be completely off the off the throttle here, completely off and then completely off the brakes on the exit you see, so off the throttle and off the brakes. Is in, off the throttle in the end, in the in the braking, and off the brakes on the exit. That’s the way to go. If you do this kind of paddle double plane is bad. If you have this problem, you have to find it out on the data. Using the exhaust stem sensor can help you a bit. But I need you to to get the the brake and throttle sensor from aim. They’re so good, so precise, and you I’ll teach you how to calibrate them. And once you have those, it’s so much easier to spot minor differences. Minor Of course, if you do a big one, of course, you can still see it without this. You can also understand a bit from the RPM and exhaust temperature. When the exhaust temperature is not going up, it’s sorry, it’s not going down, it’s still gonna, like, almost flat. It means you keep you’re doing braking gas. But again, it’s way better to do it like this. And also, when you notice like that, then you can just tell it straight in the face of the driver. Listen, you’re complaining the engine is bad, but you’re destroying the engine by and you’re killing the engine by doing braking gas like that. So you got to fix your technique. Technique. You can’t complain about the engine. It’s, it’s really, it’s a joke, if you would.

So, yeah, I encourage you to think about this…

Every time you get off the gas, every time, every time you brake, make sure you get off the gas fully 100% your feet has to literally be moving out, like have a gap on the from the pedal. Because if you try to keep it, that’s the thing you have to make sure that your pedals are a bit further, you know, they’re not too close. And that’s really the thing you have to make sure you are, in that regards, very, very, very specific. On the brakes, come off the gas, on the on the throttle when you’re on the exit, come off the brakes.

Hope that was helpful!

And remember to keep sennding it! 😉

Ciao!