The sim footage really helps in understanding the concept - definitely worth using them for future videos!

Great idea of using iRacing to illustrate, but I'd make sure to show the footage at least at 30fps to observe the vehicle's movement properly. Great video as always!

Simulator shots are great, but the difference in FPS is jarring. If they could be recorded at 60fps in future vids that'd be great!

It was Mario Andretti, who said "drivers still think the brakes are for slowing the car down”. Using the brakes to turn the car is a bewildering subject that Scott, only just touched on. I read an interview with Phil Keen, the sportscar racer. He said that drivers he coaches often brake later than him. However, the car is not as balanced through and out of the corner.

Changing the brake bias for each corner... that's some hardcore dedication to racing right there. Not sure if I'll ever have the level of skill to drive like that. Makes you appreciate these drivers even more. :)

7:43 I think what a lot of beginners fail to realize is that you don’t just want to reach 100% grip at one point in the braking phase, mid corner, and through to the exit phase, but you want to be getting 100% of the grip that you can through all four tyres continuously through the corner. A lot of people can easily find the limit of grip in the initial braking phase, but won’t stay right on the edge of grip fully through the entire braking phase. The same goes for the mid corner and exit, it’s easy to get to 100% at one point but hard to maintain it through the entirety of the corner. Realizing that and having that mindset of: it’s not always about braking later, higher minimum speed, and getting up to full throttle earlier, it’s carrying just a little bit more speed through everything in between that I need to do to find the last couple tenths, has really helped me improve.

Because their legs are strong. Saved you 9 minutes.

When i finally got out of the wrong mindset that i should brake always in a straight line and then turn, in the sim-racers i found that i really started pushing the brake bias further back, especially in the mid-engined GT3 and GTE cars. In real life i've been only once behind the wheel of a GT3 spec-ed car from 2015 (Audi R8 pre-Evo; best €3000 ever spent) and 2 things really surprised me - how much lighter the steering was compared to what i expected from all the sim-racing i've done and the way my rig was set up. And the other - how much easier trail braking in real life was when you can feel the car and the grip with your entire body through the seat and the pedals, not only through the wheel. Now i apply that technique everywhere which even allowed me for a short period of time to hold the lap record at one of the local carting tracks with their fastest carting class. However i also found out that when they switched to electric only carts, i can't drive nearly as fast as when i could hear the engine. Turns out, at least for me, the sound from the engine is just as important as everything else or i get a distorted or dialed down sense of speed.

despite the fps issues (which are v important) i think we’re all in agreement that the simulator footage is very helpful. thank you for the work scott, editors, etc. 😎

I've had a couple great instructors teach some of these methods on the race track. It's really amazing the difference it makes when someone properly explains it. Great video

I love the sim stuff. I get to watch it done properly by the experts all the time, seeing it done wrong and how it actually effects you times is exceptionally helpful.

Fascinating explanation of what appears to be a simple process Scott. Really well illustrates the problem of not trailbraking on track which applies to any car as well as the differences between braking in a downforce grip dominated car versus a car with little no no downforce. My only minor quibble is I do recall being taught to trail-brake at Skip Barber Driving School back in the 90's but then I did a full 3-day class and not a driving experience so perhaps that is why I got better schooled. It is really obvious that is you are totally off the brakes then the car has less grip but also that you want to transition from brake to throttle quickly but smoothly ensuring you are trying to keep enough backend for the car to be stable as you come off the brake. How F1 drivers manage to do this braking and balancing so delicately given how compressed the time is for them and the sheer forces involved is something that never ceases to amaze me because I could barely do it in a lowish donforce race car. I really wish F1 would do more pedal camera coverage because as you so eloquently point out this is perhaps the most difficult skill and at traces of speed or even g forces doesnt show the subtleties involved. Great video!

As a kid Hotwheels Acceleracers helped me learn a lot of the basics on driving skills and tactics that can be used for both racing and city driving. When it came to braking the quote I always remember from that series is “balance increases traction”. Have always kept that as a core fundamental for good driving

Love the simulation shots, really helps with the explanation

Thanks for a really good explanation of trail braking in non-downforce cars AND matching of braking to downforce in cars with downforce. The simulator footage was very helpful in showing load transfer better.

This was handy and something that I found interesting - I've had instruction from 4 different instructors and although all were racing drivers only the active one had me trail brake...this makes more sense now! I've actually decided to get a bit more into sims to understand practical line work better and this video certainly adds to the help.

Great use of examples to illustrate your point. Because i have never raced, i don't have any reference of just how much finesse and timing goes into making "fast" corners. Thank you, you have taught me what i did not know AND increased my appreciation for the skill required to be a worldclass F1 driver.

These videos are so informational! I would love to see more in this series

I agree with the others about the frame rate issue. One suggestion: g-force meter to show the increased grip force and the process of transferring the weight; good example of how you like to emphasize "blending" the various steps of cornering. Would it also be important to discuss steering inputs (how much input, what rate, etc.). Lastly, in some other videos on trail braking you spoke about trying to backwards engineer your trail braking - because finding the exact point isn't the same every time, with every car, etc. Sorry if that is a bit much to understand, kind of hard to put into text. Hope this is useful!

You gave me a different perspective on how good these guys actually are, thank you 🤛

Such a great feeling when you get it right, the front digging in and the rear just slightly creeping outward.

the simulation shots definitely helps alot in understanding difficult concepts specially for people like me who have next to nothing real life experience, only technical knowledge. however, the footage is a bit choppy so you might want to look into that

You can often see drivers changing brake bias just before attempting an overtaking move aswell. That's really impresive to see as they have to do it in a very short amount of time

I think learning straight line braking and getting the use of braking and turn in points down is super important to nail first before learning trail braking… but I super appreciate this video. I’m a few seasons into doing autocross and have also have a handful of HPDE days… and I sim race. I’m just now getting to learning the trail braking and I’m getting a lot faster as I have started to learn how to rotate the car. But, as I’m learning I’m also finding that sometimes i need to go back to basics for a few laps… otherwise I find that I’m going waaay to deep in a lot of corners. I’m self taught, so videos like these are really helpful for internalizing the techniques.

Very good job Scott. Love your work. Sim video very useful as well.

You might get more grip on the front of you are breaking while turning, but also use that grip for braking, so you have less for turning. So it is absolutely not trivial how to break while cornering, but needs a lot of skill to balance it.

The SIM animations are SUPER helpful!! Superb video. Cheers!

I know trail braking for quite a while but didn't know what was it for. now that I got this beautiful explanation and I do it straight away to my racing game and wow, it helps me turn a lot faster.

Pausing the video to say, loved the animations, nice aid to the words. Completely saw the rear of the car talking "If you don't let me go there, i go sideways". Brilliant video

This where I won all my b road battles as a youth. Love the feeling you get as the back comes around as you turn in.

I have a low power fwd with good brakes, suspension and tyres. Watching the S2000 rotate under brakes, letting the rear float around is very familiar lol. Allows scary late braking that seamlessly moves into controlled rotation / uses braking energy to turn. Very satisfying to get in the groove on some back roads

Great video, thanks for the knowledge, love the content.

Wow, excellent video! The explanations are very clear to see and understand. And your SIMs do a great job of demonstrating it. Keep up the great work on your videos. So, what is the best way to practice the trail braking technique on the track?

Trail braking FTW When you nail it, man, it feels SO good. And you just make SO much time it sometimes doesnt make sense. But mess it up and i hope you enjoy looking back at the way you came.

great examples, i learned alot from sim racing in iracing. kinda figured out the trailbraking with trial and error. Wish i saw this vid first.

Your videos are great. I wouldn't really watch F1 naturally (just love bikes that much). But the technical insights just keeps me coming back. Kudos.

The simulations are beautiful! I myself have trouble fully comprehending things explained to me if I don’t have a visual reference, like I get the concept but not fully see how it’s applied

👍🏼 great video. Understanding braking makes racing so much more interesting.

Sim shots look great and help lots. Thanks!

What a fantastic video. It deepened my understanding on how good those drivers are.

Thank you for explaining the detail why should push the brakes hard before turning in high speed.

I started sim racing earlier this year, and as I've learned to trail brake more proficiently over the course of the year. On lfm my license laps were around zolder, where I was averaging 1:33s, and then this week I'm averaging 1:29s despite not racing on the track since I first did the license. For those wondering this is on acc.

I was just wondering watching the f1 race today; sometimes they show brake and throttle action on screen. But where throttle is moderated throughout the corners, the brake is shown as either full on or full off, despite being the same kind of graph. I assumed that was odd and your video shows it is indeed not how it is actually done. Thanks! Excellent timing. :)

When Gran Turismo was first released, I bought the play book they released with it. It taught exactly this. Pretty neat.

This was a very good presentation on braking. At Sebring one race, I had an F500 driver ask me in impound just what I was using for a braking point. He had been following me into the Hairpin (the real one, not that new squiggle) and had finally chickened out, thinking something was messed up on my car that wasn't indicating any braking. He couldn't believe I didn't brake until well into the turn and was back off again before the apex. He had been braking just as he turned in, but an F500 is small enough with giant brakes that braking the width of the track was more than the distance one needed to brake. He also braked there as he was still somewhat straight and trying to use straight-line braking. Just to rattle him, I told him the apex point was my braking point. I really almost was a a patch in the pavement about the center line was where I would brake. The patch was enough to upset the car in braking so I waited until after to brake. I learned to trailbrake in the early '70s, couldn't convince anyone else how much faster it was. When I wrote a paper on Wheel2Wheel in the early '90s, most said my method was nuts and that braking and accelerating at the same time wouldn't work, but a few caught on. Of course, trailbraking has been written about at least in the '70s and Donahue's Friction Circle eluded to it. At 8:59, your F1 vs. Driving School racing line is obvious to old autocrossers who learned almost 50 years ago to sacrifice the first corner if it led to a faster second corner leading onto a long straight to get higher straightline speed. It is also the type of line a FVee driver would use, since they have so little power, they have to get the longer run setting up the straight.

There are some race footage clips of Frankenmacher driving the F2004 with throttle and braking graphics, that show him putting on a master class of this very technique. That never got old to watch. And in his prime, he could do this like no other driver. Driving an entire stint like it was one big continuous lap time. And the entire race like it was 3 really long laps in a typical 2 stop race. I've been watching racing of all sorts for 45 years. Never saw another driver link every part of a race together with seamless cohesion like Michael Schumacher could. Not even The Professor Prost could do it quite like Schumy.

Some of what you mention about braking in to the corner I picked up driving with out a brake servo in my early years of driving, so when swapping cars I just adapted, that also applied to power steering, my brother in law borrowed my van without power steering and lasted a whole mile before bringing it back claiming it was too hard to drive. and now we have anti lock brakes people would be lost if you took all the aids away. Your sim illustrations do add another form of reference to bless us with your wisdom and that is good as Clarkson would say.

I took the SKip Barber course at Lime Rock way back in 1980. To his credit the Barber school taught trail braking. They actually distinguished themselves from other schools advertising "trailing throttle oversteer." I think that was the phrase -- at any rate they started off with the friction circle to introduce the physics.

I like the animated actions shots!, It helps explain things clearer.

the simulator references are spectacular and much appreciated. You definitely should do them more for your different videos.

I love the sim shots, because visualizing what you're explaining is better for noobs like myself, that lack the technical vocabulary for what you're explaining. It helps learn. Though I would really appreciate you record them on a better PC to have better image framerates. It's pretty stuttery, as is.

The sim shots are great and a helpful demonstration, but we’ve gotta get you guys a setup that can play and record at a smooth 30-60fps!

love the sim examples!

The sim footage is great! I recommend a higher FPS, so that we can see what's happening more clearly

Short answer: When you continue to brake through the turn the cars weight is transferred to the front axle due to sudden momentum loss. The added weight on the front tires increases grip through the turn allowing you to get back up to speed faster through the apex.

what helped me the most was reading to pretend there is a string going from your hands to your brake foot. As you turn you lift off the brake the more turn angle you have

I'll add to the chorus the sim shots are a creative and effective visual tool. It really helps me program the vehicle's physics into my brain. For me who has done a lot of action sports, the Wyatt Knox style of communicating the dynamics with his hands and voice also works, and is engaging, but I think one needs to speak that language to get it, so this feels more accessible. I wonder how you might combine the two, to communicate more of the emotion and feeling of what you're doing in the car concurrently with the external sim shots.

The sim footage really helps understand what is happening for us visual folk

when i used to autocross, the very best bit of braking advice i was ever given was to "think of there being a wire around the steering column, where turning the steering wheel winds up the wire and pulls up on the pedals" (not clutch pedal). if you are perfectly straight you can be 100% on each pedal, but the more steering input you give the less pedal depression should be occurring. it doesn't work for every situation of course, but for teaching rookies it helps them a lot more than telling the to "just brake in a straight line" or "look ahead" in terms of figuring out how hard they can brake or accelerate at certain points. I'm not sure how successful it'd be for the track, since we needed the car to do lots of different things back to back really fast and normally without knowing what the racing line actually was at the start.

Keep providing Sim footage, VERY helpful

Great explanation and demonstration! brb crushing some rival times in Forza :P

The sim views are helpful. Can you please make a video explaining how on earth they’re able to adjust brake bias multiple times per lap? Where does one even begin with this?

The sim footage is a HUGE help! Please keep it in.

Simshots are super useful with your explanation. 👍

You can steer your car around a carousel by applying throttle to go wide and lift to turn in. Trail braking gets real weird in a sharp corner when you have massive understeer.

Great video as usual. The clips from the sims really help to visuallze what youre talking about. Ive become many seconds faster in the sim since I started watching your videos. Cheers. ps Cant wait to see you driving on the ceiling, you nutter.

The sim clips are very illustrative!

I never got taught this brake then turn method, but I dont like trail-braking either as it makes the car too unstable. I just went with a throttle/brake blend that kept the pitch of the car to my liking.

Great and methodical video. Would you consider taking one to the next level and detail how they manage the five (5) aspects of braking: Example uses a left-hand turn... 1. Initial straight line (braking) (fronts load equally) 2. Corner Entry (front right loads, rear left unloads) 3. Apex (outer tires load, inner tires unload) 4. Corner Exit (rear right loads, front left unloads) 5. Acceleration (rears load, fronts unload) I'm referring to the "walking" of the loaded (and also the unloaded opposite) tire(s) through the phases. I ask because *this* is the feel we "feel" in optimum trail braking. Do please consider it, as I can tell you are capable of conveying it well! And, if you have time, a video describing the choice of apex by the *straight* being either prior to, or after the corner...

It also depends on the weight distribution and if the car is front rear or mid engined. This technique applied with a fast hatch FWD that has the engine hanging above the front wheels can really put you in trouble and spin uncontrollably.

Last bit is mind blowing informative video

As others mentioned, sim stuff is definitely useful, ideally at a non choppy frame rate though

Exceptional explanation!

I think the sim footage could be great, some of the clips in this video appeared choppy though. That said, it still provided a great example and gave us something visual to focus on. Just choppy dependent on the "camera" angle. Should be easy enough to resolve. Cheers

I once did a track day at Oulton Park in a BMW M3. My instructor taught me trail braking and not the normal track day way. Wasn't what I expected. It was bloody hard, but when i got it right I couldn't believe how fast it was.

The one thing i learned during my brief sim racing carrier is that braking is everything

Anyway to do side by side showing the brake it self as the car travels at the corner and around the corner,etc maybe include the gas pedal as well.

Love these simulations No need to deal with fair use and clip collecting and allows you guys to more choice in how and from which angles you want to show something to us

Thanks for this video, today I finally figured it out. I'm in no way a racer. Recently unintentionally did this trick on my routine weekend drive to parents hometown. It's a hilly area with a lot of bends where I usually do 60kph after hard braking in this particular slightly downhill corner. But that day, I was daydreaming and forgot to brake early as I usually did. Only started braking at corner entry and suddenly felt in total control of the car at 20kph higher than usual despite the screeching rear wheels, solely managing the braking, and only started accelerating near the end of corner. The lack of understanding and risk of public road safety made me think it's not worth to try it ever again. Though quite sporty, It was still a FWD family sedan, so nahh

Just from games. I usually take over with the throttle while lifting the brake. Rwd’s like that, especially rear and mid engined cars. On exit you can overload it just a bit for even more effect, quite early, pushing the car through a corner, attacking instead of patiently waiting to get back control. But it’s ruddy hard on roadcars, tuned or not. They just give way without warning

Bravo great video.

The sim footage is a great idea and should absolutely be kept going forward, as not only are the visualizations helpful for newbies and adepts alike, but they're also great for showing errors and mistakes and the resulting consequences, without racking up major debt on mechanical repairs or loss of personal functionality/life 😜. Just needs to ensure that the sim footage is captured or encoded at a proper framerate (30fps minimum but 60fps would be ideal) as well as the YT video itself to enable smooth video playback.

excellent video esp with the animations

Loving the simulation shots for us visual learners :)

I taught myself this on the streets taking the long ways home from work because they have an interesting turn or two

Really liked the sim shot to see the shift in weight. Seemed very appropriate.

UHm.....I disagree. I learned two techniques. Brake easy, bring momentum down enough for suspension to be balanced and ACCELERATE smoothly AT CORNER ENTRY. When done correctly, your exit speed is massive...as taught by Jacky Stewart Next is the Schumacher style of braking to the apex. While you come in hot, brake easy but not enough to unsettle the car, but come off once you hit the apex. This is more controlled way of dive bombing..... as taught by Peter Windsor

Enjoyed the simulation.

Love the sim footage! Extra points for it being Iracing!!!

The sim footages is very useful, though if it can run at a cleaner framerate (preferably 60 or 30 steady) it will be easier to understand and digest. Thanks!

Wondering how would that apply to gokarts with only rear braking. Would the trail-braking technique still be valid !? Thank you for the video and congratulations on the channel, m8 !!!

I've always come in hot and heavy while still straight, and very slowly begin releasing the brakes while turning into the turn, still trail braking to the point the cars front end becomes highly responsive and I can feed the throttle.

Thank you 👍

The simulation gave a great view. It makes perfect sense once you see it. Thanks!

I have spent five days at the AMG Driving Academy over three different courses at Circuit of The Americas and lime rock Park. They emphasize trail braking constantly. Then again, their instructors are generally professional race car drivers.

Ive done a lio mountain run once. Made the mistake of having the balance too much forward and a tightening radius i noticed a bit late. was "lucky" enough to control the slide or it wouldve ended badly.

What about front wheel drive? Thanks for the great information. As a novice race driver, braking is an area I'm particularly keen to develop... But I race a front wheel drive car. Is there much difference between braking application and setting up a corner? What tips could help improve my lap times? And so here's an interesting video title idea for you. "How would an F1 car need to brake differently if it was front wheel drive"

Agree with others that the sim shots are great but the framerate needs to be the same as the rest of the video. UKposts says the video is 24fps but I imagine iRacing was recorded at 30 or 60. Having the footage recorded at a multiple of 24 would look much better. OBS should be able to do this but you may need to cap the framerate of iRacing as well either in game or through the graphics card settings.

I'm still trying to master trail braking. I've been driving real cars and sim cars for a lot of years and I'm pretty quick but this is definitely something I can improve on and is the hardest skill I've had to learn. I know for a fact the time I'm losing is due to this technique but nailing it down consistently, especially in the heat of competition is very difficult.

Big fan of the sim shots