u/NoakesyCoaching

Hey All,

Like usual, I’ve written a short article sharing my thoughts and experience on a given topic in sim racing. My goal with these articles ultimately is to help give people a bit more information about the hobby we all love, while also hopefully making for an interesting read.

If you don't know me, I'm Tom, and I've been working full-time for the last 18 months on a sim racing coaching business. My thoughts in this mini essay draw on the 700+ hours of coaching I’ve done in the past year. Just to say that the things I’m sharing in these articles aren't pulled from nowhere, but come from everything I’ve seen during the last 18 months coaching hundreds of drivers, of all ability levels.

Straight Line Braking Consistency

This article will be quite specific to a very niche aspect of straight line braking consistency. The most common, most well known, and most important aspects of straight line braking consistency are hands down the consistency of your braking point, and the consistency of your braking pressure. I don’t want to spend this article discussing these, as they are factors that most sim racers will likely already have an awareness of. But there is one additional factor that I’ve noticed a lot recently in coaching sessions, which is the consistency of your car positioning during straight line braking, specifically the angle of the car relative to the corner you are entering.

Let's assume, entering a standard heavy braking corner, for example The Bus stop at Spa, that  you have a perfectly precise reference point, and a perfectly consistent brake trace. You will not have a consistent entry speed into the corner if you do not also have a consistent angle on which to brake. What I mean by that, is, where is the car pointing when you start braking? Are you pointing into the apex, are you pointing along the white line, or are you pointing away from the corner? It may seem slightly pedantic, but the angle of your car absolutely influences your ability to enter the corner with consistent entry speed. If you angle the car into the corner, even by a couple of degrees, then you will not be using all of the track at turn in. If you point away from the corner, then in order to avoid running out of track during the braking zone, you will necessarily have to do some cornering before you reach your turn in point, just to avoid dipping a wheel on the grass. So if your angle is not consistent during braking, then on some laps you will be using less track on entry, on others you will brake nicely in a straight line along the edge of the track, and in others you will have to do a small amount of cornering (and hence can’t do as much braking) before you even reach the turn in point.

The best rule then, in almost all corners that require straight line braking, is to brake along the white line, in a way that does not require you to do any cornering before reaching your turn in point. If you think car angle on entry is something you haven't paid attention to yet, I encourage you to run a few laps, focusing on braking along the white line. If you were previously having to correct your car angle during the braking zone, you may be surprised by how much more quickly the car can slow down when you fully line the car up before braking and let the steering wheel go light under braking.

As always, I appreciate the comments, upvotes and support that these articles get :). If you have any thoughts on future articles you’d like to see from me, feel free to leave a comment, or drop a message in my discord server!

Cheers
Tom
Noakesy Coaching