Braking
This is part 2 of a 3 part series on feel. Please read them in order to get the most out of them.
Braking, with the advent of ABS, has changed more than either the steering or throttle (which can also both be electronically aided with traction control and Stability Control). ABS is just more accepted and universal even with “real” drivers, I philosophically disagree strongly here (I think they are all anti driver and therefore horrible). That is not the point of course, ABS is very accepted so I have to treat it as such, of course, not all cars have, can have or want to have ABS so we’ll look at all the considerations. There is a direct negative aspect to feel with ABS though please remember I can only really speak generally, there are very different ABS systems out there from horrible to quite amazing, you can fairly confidently say though that to some extent they lack feel compared to conventional brakes. Does feel really matter if your car has ABS? Absolutely, do ABS systems work better than conventional brakes? Sometimes (system/conditions/driver dependent). People love to say they are better these days (2025 as I write this), that certainly is the easy answer but as of right now I personally feel a well set up conventional brake system with a proper pedal box (dual masters and a balance bar) is still my preference, why? Direct connection and feel… and I think it’s better on any surface and directly affects my confidence.
That’s what this feel series is all about, driver confidence through the feedback loops of driving; brain guides eyes, eyes see it, brain processes and senses confirm, so on and so forth. The more you can feel the more one with the car you become and the more likely you can slip into flow and for a longer amounts of time.
So, what is the information you get while braking that is useful? Grip is the easy answer initially, relative pressure gives us the first clue (prior laps vs. this lap), grip is a sum of road surface grip (called Mu) and the tires ability to adhere to that surface, a molecular bond so if it locks there is more shearing than bonding. Lock up can be felt, that corner goes numb which on the front will effect torque on the wheel and you can is many cases hear it, on the rear if it’s just one you won’t notice much other than possibly hearing it, if it’s two locking (other than diagonally) you will have immediate stability issue to cope with. Sim racers will put haptic shakers on each corner of the rig to simulate this. An ABS car will of course modulate this and people say it’s so fast and (unlike us) can manipulate pressure to each wheel independently many time per second…all true but it can’t anticipate like us so if we’re on point we can beat it just still by never getting lockup, by anticipating available grip and deftly putting the car right on the threshold limit and not subtly pulsing over the limit and back like a motorsport ABS system will always do to some extent (they keep improving this with every iteration) we can, when flowing, beat it. Anticipation can always beat fast reactions but it has to be accurate and no second guessing. I will spend a remarkable (and in my eyes completely justified) amount of time setting up brake feel. There is just so much confidence to be gained here that radically affects your confidence and ability to push incredibly hard with the vehicle. This is a rite of passage for me with any new race car I set up. I am on a first name basis with the brake companies I respect (if you must know: PFC, Pagid and RPS). I won’t run anything but their product on the cars I drive, there is nothing on the car that I am more stubborn and picky about than the braking system. The brakes don’t just slow the car, their release characteristics determine how well I can release the brakes and all the corner speed is hidden there.
The basics: Don’t left foot brake unless the car has a race seat and harnesses, there is nothing to be gained anyway (unless we are talking Rally, laggy turbo car or similar exceptions), the reason you don’t gain is that you can be too fast to the brakes and the load won’t have yet transferred so you get unnecessary lockup and if it’s analogue or an ABS system it takes at least a moment to re-modulate once the load gets there costing you at least a tenth or two. You need to match the pressure with the load transfer and strangely enough moving your foot quickly from gas to brake is just the right amount of delay. The reason not too in a road car is that for precise consistent lock in pedal pressure management we can’t afford to slide forward in the seat on brake application, we need our left leg on the foot rest as the brace so we can accurately brake (and as discussed in steering only therefore needing a light touch on the wheel), the left leg brace is too important to ignore for precise braking and steering inputs.
What’s happening as cues for the driver to use? Obviously the pedal itself, it’s actually amazing how it all works because it’s a pedal and your foot wearing a thin soled shoe and then our inner ear with our built in inertial navigation system, when trained and in tune even minute yaw (weaving) and tiny amounts of impending lock up (that comes from inner ear and experience or a pedal that starts to lightly pulse with ABS) can be adjusted for in real time, we do it without any conscious thought, my favorite is the Moto GP or WSBK guys, where the bikes weave a lot! Even with their new technologies that lower CG height on entry and exit they all naturally weave under hard braking and they just adjust turn in point to perfectly coincide with the correct helpful weave much like a Scandinavian Flick with a rally car. This all takes such delicate feel for timing and balance that are at the core of our job and that is to manipulate the mass of the vehicle in such a way that wants to turn in. Remember they don’t naturally want to turn in (…object in motion stays in motion), it is most definitely 100% feel based. The electronic ABS version of this is inside corner braking on entry. That is a key differentiator between not only analogue vs digital but also motorsports grade ABS/TC/ESC is that the motorsports version assume you know what you are doing so they aren’t afraid of making the car more pointy while the street stuff has to assume an untrained driver so is biased much more towards understeer and stability. Let’s face it stability is boring if there is good feel and instability great fun and super useful. But if the vehicle is numb that is the opposite story.
It’s interesting to expand on this a little. If the vehicle is numb you might logically feel you can’t possibly flow since you’re getting no real information on the state of grip in real time through the controls and if you know me and what a feel freak I am you’d expect me to say it’s impossible…but… we ‘re pretty amazingly adaptable and our inertial navigation system of an inner ear can actually alone have us driving the car at the limit as long as two criteria are met, the vehicle must be consistent and predictable and secondly, we need enough experience with that vehicle to really believe it is consistent and predictable. As older simulators (pre haptic feedback, I’m Pole Position old) prove using only our eyes and brain if we do enough laps we can drive right at the limit with zero sensory feedback from anything but our eyes. Real championships have been won in such race cars. As you’d imagine it’s not usually all three controls being numb (that’s rare) but maybe one or two of the three controls. It’s not great though is it? Aren’t we in this for that connection… so you can flow without feel but it’s not ideal, the “system” is much more robust with redundancies if we have both tactile feel and our inner ear completing the picture for us. Without redundancy we are much more susceptible to popping out of flow since it’s so much easier for us to be surprised without the sensory and inner ear all working and agreeing in real time together.
Back to braking feel, so we can sense lockup with pedal feel, yaw and also long g diminishing as a result of any lock up, you can also certainly feel bias issues (impending premature rear or front lock up), to be honest this is a very, I almost want to say emotional connection with the brake pedal and the steering input at turn in, the rate of turn balance speed and position all coming together in a defining moment for the car at that corner, it’s such a 4 dimensional moment, harnessing everything you know and committing. You may have heard my unpopular opinion about the most important part of a corner, the popular answer is “the exit” but to me it’s entry because if you get that right everything else takes care of itself, you’ve given the car inputs in such a way that it wants to do it right.
That brake release is a key element of variability that needs granular feel to get it just right, I absolutely agree any corner starts with brake application beforehand in a straight line (if necessary) but getting to the turn in with the four variables just right is what makes or breaks the corner.
How is the ABS car in that same scenario? As stated, a little less tactile, that maze of plumbing that is the ABS pump and hardware and programming may have the system braking better than an average skilled racer but it comes at a price, consistency and predictability (especially on uneven surfaces where you can get the dreaded “ice mode” wooden pedal), the brake release is usually not as predictable either (the transition from ABS to trail brake) that can be exaggerated by the pad choice if it’s too grippy (high Mu). It can be done well but the better you get the more picky about anything between you and the tool you’re operating you become. Also, then factor in the programing (which I earlier stated can be useful if they considered your needs and intentions), the result though is a more disconnected experience. If the bias is set correctly (and can still be adjusted for changing conditions) it is entirely possible to have it active but never use it. Remember it reacts to lock up so as long as you are effectively threshold braking it just sits there waiting. If it suddenly starts raining or a car dumps some fluids on the track we can probably agree we would be quite delighted having it intervene and keep us on track in a surprise moment than to not have it at all. So… safety net or pure simple braking feel, which do you value the most? I still lead toward pure feel but those days are probably numbered (especially if they make ice mode only happen on ice and not also bumps!).
Thus ends our chat about steering and braking feel and how the work together for us to able to accurately monitor and therefore adjust the car in real time to insure an efficient entry to the corner. Next up is what we do next, that is to get it out of there as fast as we possible can… stay tuned…the end sorry, exit is near…I can just feel it…
To Be Continued in Part 3…Throttle