Late Braking in Karting: How to Beat the Fear of Braking Hard

By Alessio Lorandi, 2013 CIK-FIA World Champion, KF-Junior. Braking late is what I liked the most and where I was strongest, and this is how I teach it to the drivers I work with.

Your mechanic told you to brake later. You tried once, you almost spun, and you said “I’m not going to do that again”.

We have all been in that situation. Maybe you are at the beginning, maybe it is one of your first days on the track, and you didn’t quite feel like doing it.

But listen, you have to get past that scary moment. If you want to be the strongest driver on the grid, you need to be the strongest on the brakes. There’s no way around it. Braking is a skill of its own.

Why does braking late matter so much in a kart?

Because I always say that everything starts in the entry. The mid corner and the exit are pretty much a consequence of what you do in the entry.

And in a kart a few meters are a lot. Going through data with young drivers at BabyRace in a WSK weekend, I’m amazed to see how many of them can’t feel the optimal braking point on their own. They wait for the faster teammate to light up the way.

Take a hairpin that you reach at 97 km/h in a 60 Mini, say the mechanics’ hairpin at Lonato, turn 4. If you are 7 meters too early there, it is up to 2 tenths. In Formula 2 at 300 km/h at Monza, the same 7 meters are roughly half a tenth. It’s always 7 meters, but the time you lose is wildly different.

And it adds up. If you are conservative everywhere, one meter on the braking here, one meter on the braking there, you are half a second off at the end of the lap. Easily.

The other thing is that when a driver brakes early, 90 percent of the time he also turns in early. It’s an automatism. We brake, we wait a tiny bit, and we turn. So you brake early, you turn early, you get an early apex and you are pointing the wrong way at the mid corner. If early braking is your main problem, I wrote the steps in how to fix your early braking.

Everything starts in the entry. The mid corner and the exit come as a consequence.

Is “slow in, fast out” faster?

No. I’m a big enemy of the “slow in, fast out” technique. I hear it a lot in the karting community, from coaches and from mechanics, and I think it’s bad advice.

The belief is that you gain more on the exit than what you lose on the entry. It’s not really the case. Say you lose two tenths on the entry. On the exit you may gain back 1.5 tenths. That still puts you at a net loss of half a tenth.

And what happens after you over slow? You feel you are too slow in the mid corner, so you go on the gas very early. It puts a bandage on the problem. Sometimes it even makes it worse, because you get pushed out wide and you lose on the exit too.

Do you think Schumacher, Senna, Hamilton or Verstappen developed their skills by going slow into the corners? It’s not possible. Driving like that may get you decent results in club races or at national level. On the world stage it will be really hard.

Where should you brake late and hard?

Only where you need to. You don’t want to be doing it everywhere.

The slow corners where you arrive at high speed, that’s where you smash and hold the brakes. In the fast corners you will be flat out. In the medium speed corners you probably won’t need heavy braking, maybe just a tap.

So when I talk about late braking I’m talking about the heavy braking zones. In those, 90 percent of the times you have to brake really late and hold the brakes until the apex, pretty much. That part is trail braking, and I explain it in the art of trail braking.

What should late braking feel like?

Like a roller coaster. You know that moment when it lifts you up and you are out of breath? Going into a heavy braking zone has to feel pretty much like that.

You should feel that you have to hold the brakes until the end, because otherwise you are going to go straight. You should almost feel like “oh, I’m gonna miss it”.

If you are going in too easily and you don’t have that feeling, you are not pushing the limits.

There is another sign. If you need a lot of steering angle in the corner, you are probably not carrying enough speed. In a kart the steering is really direct, so the more speed you carry, the more rotation you get and the less steering you need.

Why are you afraid of braking hard?

Because you don’t know what is going to happen. It’s the unknown that scares us.

Think about when you learned to ride a bicycle. At first I had the two extra wheels on the side. Then my father took them off and held me from behind. And I fell. He picked me up and I tried again. That’s the only way I learned.

Braking hard is the same. You only get the confidence by trying harder again and again, expecting that you will make mistakes and that you will spin. The comfort zone is not going to turn a new driver into a champion.

And by the way, being afraid at first doesn’t mean you don’t have what it takes. You can build that skill. I was a fearless kid, a bit frenetic, and I know that not everybody starts like that. Many kids are afraid of the dark. If you are afraid of the dark, you stay in the dark for long and you see that nothing happens. With hard braking it works the same way.

With young drivers there is often something else behind it. When a kid drives with the fear of making mistakes, he brakes early and he doesn’t overtake, because he doesn’t want to lose time or crash. Fear is like a handbrake. So if you are the parent, take that pressure off first.

How do you get over the fear of hard braking?

With what I call “exposure therapy”. You expose yourself to super hard braking until it’s not unknown anymore. This is how I would do it.

1. Pick a random test day. Open pit lane, few drivers around you. A completely relaxed day with no race and no championship at stake.
2. Forget the lap times. Even if your lap times are so much slower, you don’t care. You are there just to practice the braking.
3. Go to the heavy braking zones. The slow corners where you arrive fast.
4. Brake as hard and as late as possible. Lock those brakes, and make sure you are able to stop the kart.
5. Keep the steering straight and hold the brakes. When the rear tyres lock, don’t touch the steering.
6. Accept anything that happens. You’re going to spin sometimes. Whatever, you are there for that.
7. Have somebody pushing you. A coach, a mechanic, whoever is going to tell you to brake as hard as you possibly can.

What is the worst case? You may go into the barriers. It’s very, very hard to. And every time you have a scare, it gets less and less scary.

That’s how I learned, by the way. I didn’t really have a coach. My mechanic’s number one advice, every time, was “brake later, brake later”. Even when I knew I was already braking really late. I think that being pushed like that is what turned me into a “braking monster”.

I’m sure that after one or two days of this braking drill you will be a different driver on the brakes. And in hindsight you will make fun of yourself. How could I be afraid of such a thing?

The same goes for every other limit. I have a motto with my drivers at BabyRace: if they don’t go at least once on the grass in a practice session, they are not pushing enough. Braking later and missing the apex is an overpushing mistake, and it’s the only kind of mistake I cheer for.

Why do you spin when you brake hard?

Most of the times it’s the steering. The braking force is fine.

What happens is that you brake hard, you hear the tyres locking, you panic, and you turn the steering. That’s what makes you spin.

So you should actually be happy if you spin a lot of times on the brakes. It means you are braking really hard. Then you fix the hands. Steering straight, hold on to the brakes, and after a while you know that nothing is going to happen.

Just don’t go to the other extreme. Sometimes I see a driver sliding in the mid corner, by the apex. The chassis is fine. He simply didn’t stop the kart on the entry and tried to carry way too much speed. You brake late, but you have to stop it.

One note if you drive a KZ. With the front brakes you need to be straight when you hit them hard, so you go more in diagonal towards the apex. And the fronts rarely lock. You feel more of a vibration.

How do you know if you braked late enough?

The first sign is the rear tyres. I want you to chase that lock. When the rears lock, it means you braked at the highest pressure that the grip level allowed. You are using all the brakes and all the grip of the track. That is the most you can do in that moment.

The second sign is the release. If you are able to come off the brakes as soon as you turn, then you were probably not late enough on the brake.

Try to brake super late and you will see that automatically you are forced to hold the brakes into the corner. That’s the real reason you hold them to the apex: it lets you brake later.

And the tyres will thank you. The only way to warm the tyres up is to push them at the edge of the friction circle. When you are coasting you are massaging the tyres, and in the winter that means no grip until the last lap. You want to be a “braking monster”, not a “coasting kitten”.

How you find the braking point lap after lap, by reference or by feeling, is another story. I show it in what braking by feeling looks like, and the decisions you take in those few meters are in inside the mind of a driver during braking.

How does late braking help you overtake and defend?

If you are the latest and hardest braker on the grid, you gain lap time on the entries and the overtakes become effortless.

The major mistake I see in overtakes is that the driver is not actually braking later than the one he is trying to pass. It always comes down to confidence. He is not sure about the move, so he brakes a bit earlier than the driver in front and then tries to get the position by releasing the brakes. That makes no sense.

And then there is the defence. Not to brag, but this was what I liked the most and where I was strongest. I could defend without even trying to defend. I would brake so late and in diagonal that the driver behind would think “I’m gonna miss the corner if I try to brake later than this guy, who already almost misses it”.

So you defend without really closing the line. People look at you and say “wow, how is he doing that?”.

The opposite is also true. If you are early and soft on the brakes, you are very vulnerable in a race.

How many G can a kart pull under braking?

I can give you my numbers on the KZ, which has brakes on the front wheels too. At the World Championship in Franciacorta I pulled 1.8, 1.9 G on the braking for turn 5 and for turn 13, the last hairpin. That’s pretty high.

When the track is not grippy and the tyres are not grippy, you probably won’t get above 1.6, 1.7 G.

It depends on a few things.

Your goal is to pull more and more G, so you can brake later and later. If you want to go deeper on how to measure a braking zone, I have a full piece on deceleration efficiency.

Is it you, or is it the brakes?

Check the brakes before you blame yourself. I’ve noticed over the years that when the brakes aren’t spot on, you lose the confidence to push the entries. And when that happens the chassis doesn’t flex as well and the overtakes feel more risky too.

So if the others are braking later than you, ask yourself a few questions. Do they have new tyres? Is it the grip? Or is it my brakes?

Maybe you can’t brake as late as the others because your pads are finished, or because you have no more oil in your brake pump. So make sure there is no air in the braking system and that the pads and the tyres are in a good state. Sometimes you bleed the brakes, you rebuild them, you go out and wow, that was it.

In KZ, if you notice you are relying too much on the engine brake to stop the kart, something is wrong. The pads are finished, there is air in the system, or the grip is not there.

How do you check your braking on the data?

I look at the max brake G, at the braking distance and at how repeatable the braking points are.

Keep in mind that in the first laps you will brake a bit earlier. Then the grip comes, and you go later and harder. And the braking point alone doesn’t tell you whether you made the apex. You have to check that too.

You have no teammate to compare with? Use your own laps. If you do 15 laps in a session, you will see that in some corner you did a better job in a lap that was not your fastest one. Your goal for the next session is to match that, or go a bit further, and see where the limit is.

If you went too far, you’ll know. You don’t make the apex and you lose on the exit. Then you probably found your limit.

It won’t happen on day one. And not after 50 days either. You gotta be patient.

Next test day, pick one heavy braking zone and forget the lap timer. Brake as hard and as late as you can, keep the steering straight and see what happens.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get over the fear of braking hard in a kart?

By doing it on a day with nothing at stake. Go out on a quiet test day, forget the lap times, and in the heavy braking zones brake as hard and as late as you can, even if you spin. Every scare gets less scary. I call it “exposure therapy”.

Why do I spin when I brake late?

Most of the times because of the steering. You brake hard, you hear the tyres locking, you panic and you turn the steering. Keep the steering straight and hold the brakes.

Is it bad to lock the rear tyres in a kart?

When you are learning to brake hard, I want you to chase that lock. It means you braked at the highest pressure that the grip level allowed.

Should I brake late in every corner?

No. You brake hard and late in the slow corners where you arrive at high speed. Fast corners are flat out, and medium speed corners may need just a tap.

Is slow in, fast out the right way to drive a kart?

I don’t think so. If you lose two tenths on the entry you may gain back 1.5 on the exit, so you are still at a loss. Everything starts in the entry.