Braking Too Early in Karting: What It Costs You and How to Fix It

By Alessio Lorandi, 2013 CIK-FIA World Champion, KF-Junior. Updated on 17 October 2026.

Let me be straight with you.

One of the biggest mistakes I see drivers make, at every level, is braking too early. It happens to almost anyone. Even me when I was a kid.

And trust me, it’s costing them way more than they think.

So let’s break it down. Why do drivers brake too early? And more importantly, how do you fix it?

How much time does braking too early cost you?

I’m talking two, three tenths per lap. Or more.

On tracks with heavy braking zones like Franciacorta, Zuera or Sarno, that can turn into four or five tenths. And in championships like WSK or FIA races, that’s the difference between fighting for the win and not even making the final.

That’s how brutal it is.

And the slower the corner, the more it hurts. Being 7 metres off the braking point at Monza in Formula 2, at 300 km/h into Variante 1, is roughly half a tenth, with the same mid and exit speed. Being 7 metres too early at 97 km/h in a 60 Mini, say the mechanics’ hairpin at Lonato (Turn 4), is up to 2 tenths.

It’s always 7 metres. But the time you lose is wildly different.

When you brake too early, two things happen. You give away lap time for free. And you never actually find the real limit.

Sure, it feels safe. You’re not locking up, you’re not running wide. You’re just staying within your comfort zone. That’s fine if you’re learning the basics. But at a competitive level, those lost metres decide whether you’re in P1 or P20.

How do you know you are braking too early?

The first step is awareness. Most drivers don’t even realise they’re braking too early.

The second sign is what happens after the brakes. When a driver brakes early, 90 percent of the time he will also turn in early. There’s an automatism in our muscle memory: we brake, we wait a tiny bit, and we start to turn. So brake early and you turn in early. Turn in early and you get an early apex, and at the mid corner you’re pointing the wrong way.

That’s why beginners take an early apex most of the time. Not because they choose to. Because they braked too early. Beginners brake early and soft, you want the opposite, late and hard, and that’s tip 4 in my tips for first-time go kart drivers.

And train yourself to run a little simulator in your head after every corner. Did I push too deep and lose the exit? Or was I too conservative on the entry, and I could have braked 2 metres later? If you can feel that lap by lap, you don’t have to wait for the data to tell you afterwards.

If you cannot tell from inside the kart, send me your onboard. I look at your braking points corner by corner in an onboard review and I tell you where you are coasting.

Why do drivers brake too early?

Mostly because it’s comfortable. Braking early and throttling early is the easy thing to do. And if that’s easy, where’s the advantage?

With kids there is often something else. When a kid drives with the fear of making mistakes, the driver is going to brake early because he’s afraid of making mistakes and losing time. And if that fear comes from not being approved by the parents, it’s a massive handbrake on his performance.

The fear of the brakes themselves, locking up, spinning, missing the corner, is a big topic on its own. I wrote about it in how to beat the fear of braking hard.

And there’s another one I see all the time at the track: the driver who brakes early on purpose because he thinks it gives him a better exit. Let’s talk about that.

Does braking early give you a better exit?

You cannot think, oh, I’m going to brake soft and early so I get a better mid corner and exit. No. It’s just not going to work.

You may get a really good exit. But at the end of the day you care about the whole corner, the whole lap time. If you gain one tenth on the exit by going slow in, fast out, but you lose two tenths on the entry, that’s a net loss.

And to be honest, it’s even funny, because most of the times you end up losing on the exit too. When you brake that early you also turn in early. You get a decently high minimum speed, but then the exit is compromised, because you still have to do the rotation on the exit.

The answer is to fix the root cause, not the symptom. Brake later, and the later apex comes by itself. If you want the full picture on the apex side, it’s in early vs late apex.

How do you fix early braking, step by step?

Here’s how I’d teach one of my drivers to deal with this problem:

1. Feel it on track. Look for the coasting before the corner (above).
2. Go past the limit once, then bring it back.
3. Maximum effort first. Full pressure right away, no rolling in.
4. Follow someone faster, but watch out for the concertina effect.
5. Use teammates and data to see how much deeper you can go.
6. Use references only when they are obvious. Most of the time it’s feel.
7. Adapt to the track as the grip changes.
8. Be consistent, the right spot every single lap.
9. Keep your kart in check, so it’s not the brakes holding you back.

Fixing early braking isn’t complicated. It’s about awareness, data and discipline. And you find free lap time without touching the kart setup.

Should you brake too late on purpose?

Yes. Here’s the golden rule I teach my drivers:

If you’ve never gone past the limit on the brakes, you’ve never actually found it.

It’s better to brake too late once, miss the apex, and adjust than to spend the whole weekend thinking, “I could have braked later.” That thought means you left metres on the table, and in karting five metres is massive.

I’d rather my drivers over-push once and then bring it back. For real. Overpushing mistakes are the single best mistakes a driver can make. I’ve got a motto among my drivers at BabyRace: if they’re not going at least once on the grass in their practice session, it means they’re not pushing enough.

I want the kart to literally come back in the tent with grass on top of it.

That’s how I learned too. I didn’t really have a coach. My mechanic would give me some advice here and there, and his number one advice every time was just “brake later, brake later”. Even when I was already braking really late. I think that turned me into a braking monster, in a way.

How hard should you hit the brakes?

This one’s key.

If you brake with 60% effort and then roll into the corner, you’ll never find the real braking point. You’ve got to hit maximum pressure right away, and keep holding it. Then release only when you’re deep into the corner. That’s where precision comes from.

Rolling in too early is a bad habit. It feels smooth, it’s within your comfort zone, but it’s slow. The only time rolling speed works is on high grip, fast flowing tracks like La Conca. On most circuits, especially with 180 degree corners, rolling (or coasting) will ruin your lap.

And there’s one more reason. Coasting doesn’t stress the tyres, it massages them. The only way to warm the tyres up is to push them at the edge of the friction circle, so if you coast, you won’t have good grip until the last lap. And the last lap is too late.

If you are not sure how hard is hard enough, I explain what threshold braking is and how to feel it in a separate post. And holding the brakes towards the apex is trail braking, which is what lets you brake later in the first place.

Can following a faster driver show you where to brake?

Sounds obvious, yet one of the oldest tricks in the book is to let a quicker driver pass you and focus on matching their braking points. You’ll immediately notice how much later they brake compared to you.

But be careful of the concertina effect. When you follow from behind, it will always look like you are braking later, but it may well just be an impression. Distance contracts as speed contracts, and on the exit distance expands as speed expands. I explain it properly in the concertina effect.

And don’t make it a crutch. You already gain about 1 to 1.5 tenths by following someone in the slipstream, even up to 2 tenths in cold conditions. So in practice I ran without slipstream, completely by myself, working on hitting the perfect braking points and feeling the grip on my own. I can’t stress enough how valuable that exercise has been to me. Because when you get to the front of a race, there’s nobody left to show you where to brake.

How do you use teammates and data to brake later?

If you’ve got strong teammates, watch them. Compare their braking points to yours. If they’re going two metres deeper, that’s your new target. And if the track is getting faster, you want to push even further.

Don’t just rely on feel. Check the data and review the video, from teammates or even from YouTube. Seeing how a fast driver approaches the same corner you’re struggling with can reset your perspective. And if you have no teammate’s data, upload the MyChron file from the session you just drove to PURPL, the app I built, and it hands back the three things to change next time out.

Data also protects you from wrong advice. Say you outbraked yourself once and missed the apex by a metre. The first thing your mechanic tells you is “you have to brake earlier”. But you made that mistake just once, and all the other laps you were braking too early compared to your faster teammate. The data would have proved it.

But remember, data is backward looking. You can only check it afterwards. You’ve got to build the feeling too, so you can adjust your driving from lap to lap.

Do you need braking reference points in a kart?

In cars, you’ve got big braking boards, 50 m, 100 m, 150 m. In formula cars and GT cars you arrive at 300 km/h on the straight, so you must use reference points for braking.

In karting it’s not like that. The corners come one after the other and you’ll never hear me telling you, find a reference point and just brake there all the time. In fact I barely use any references to brake. It just comes by feeling. As late as I can, while still making the corner and the apex.

Take Lonato. I’ve been there for 20 years, since I was six years old, and I didn’t find any real reference points on the braking. The only real one is the mechanics corner, the braking on the kerb to the left. The others are not really there.

In some obvious cases kerbs, marks on the tarmac, even cracks or shadows can be your braking references. But most of the time you’ll need to rely on feel. Believe me. That’s why practicing this skill matters so much.

Should your braking point change during the day?

Braking points aren’t fixed.

• If the track grips up, you can brake later.
• If it rains or gets slippery, brake earlier.

The track changes a lot during the day. Your braking point from the session before, when the track was half a second slower, will not be the same in the next session, when the track is half a second faster. If the track gets faster you may have to brake even later and carry even more speed. You have to trust the grip.

That’s why the data from the last session is useful, but it won’t let you perfectly drive the next one. Always adapt. The track never stays the same from session to session.

How do you brake at the same point every lap?

Nailing it once isn’t enough.

You want to brake at the right spot every single lap. Once you get to your fastest lap, the goal is to repeat that braking point as close as possible. That’s how you become reliable under pressure.

It’s normal to be a bit earlier on the first laps, when the grip isn’t there yet, and then later and later as the session goes on. If you see it the other way around, later in the first laps and earlier at the end, it’s not really making sense, unless you have a big drop in grip later in the session. And that’s rare. That’s why consistency matters more than one fast lap.

And if you want to work on your braking with me for longer, look at my six month training program. There is a live call with me every week.

Is it you or the kart that won’t let you brake later?

Sometimes it’s not just you. If your kart doesn’t let you brake as late as the others, something’s wrong.

Maybe you’re not able to brake as late as the others because your pads are finished, or because you have no more oil in your brake pump. So that makes you brake early, and maybe that’s your limit, but it’s not the limit of the others.

• Check your brake system for air.
• Replace worn pads or discs.
• Put on new tyres when needed.

At high level racing, everything needs to be spot on. A tiny mechanical issue can make it impossible to match your rivals under braking. If your kart pulls to one side or the balance feels off on a KZ, that’s in brake bias and controlled braking.

Why is karting the best place to find your braking limit?

I’ll never forget racing in Pau, a tight street track, in Formula 3. You can’t afford to miss your braking point there. One lock up and you’re in the wall.

That weekend I learned a valuable lesson: in cars, you don’t always get a second chance.

But in karting, you do. And that’s a massive privilege to have. You can outbrake yourself as much as possible until you cross the limit, and then you bring it back a bit. Without any damage, and without a big bill to pay like if you went straight into the wall.

That’s why I always tell my drivers, don’t waste the opportunity. Over-push in practice, find the limit, and then bring it back for the race if needed.

Do the fastest drivers ever brake early?

Braking is where races are won and lost. That’s where the aliens make the difference.

You think Verstappen is an early braker? Or Leclerc?

If you brake early, you’ll always be average. Period.

If you brake late, push the limit, and then refine it, you’ll find those crucial tenths that separate champions from the rest.

So, are you braking too early right now?

You need to:

• Recognise when you’re braking too soon. Look for the coasting.
• Go past the limit in practice and bring it back.
• Hit the brakes hard, straight away.
• Use faster drivers, video and data as benchmarks, and learn to find it alone too.
• Stay consistent lap after lap, and adjust with the grip.

So next time you’re on track, ask yourself:

“Am I braking too early right now? Am I playing it safe, or am I finding the edge?”

Because the answer could be the difference between a podium and packing up early on a Saturday.

Frequently asked questions

How much time does braking too early cost in karting?

Two or three tenths per lap, and four or five tenths on heavy braking tracks like Franciacorta, Zuera or Sarno. In a slow corner it adds up fast: 7 metres too early at 97 km/h in a 60 Mini costs up to 2 tenths.

What is the first sign you are braking too early?

Coasting before the corner. If you are off the brakes and not yet on the throttle on the way in, you could brake later. Turning in early and taking an early apex are the next signs.

Is it better to brake too late or too early in practice?

Too late. If you’ve never gone past the limit on the brakes, you’ve never found it. Brake too late once, miss the apex, adjust, and bring it back for the race.

Should you use braking markers in a kart?

Only when they are obvious, like a kerb or a mark on the tarmac. In karting you mostly brake by feel. Fixed reference points matter in formula and GT cars, where you arrive at 300 km/h.

Why can’t I brake as late as my teammate?

Check the kart first: air in the brake system, worn pads or discs, no oil in the brake pump, old tyres. If the kart is fine, compare your braking points with his in the data and on video, and push towards his.

If you want me to tell you where you are braking too early, corner by corner, send me your onboard for an onboard review.