Braking is Everything

The brakes on karts (except KZ) are crap. When I first raced, the brakes never felt very useful at all, especially compared to a road car when my dad slammed on the anchors.

Learning to brake late, very hard BUT, also carry braking all the way to the apex, facilitating minimal steering inputs, is the primary differentiator between good and excellent drivers.

Everyone is familiar with being thrown forward by heavy braking in a car, but the sensation of deceleration in a kart was practically zero for me. And not only were the brakes borderline useless, they also caused you to immediately fly off the track. This is really the first thing we learn in karts, the brakes suck

Stage 1. Kart brakes don’t do much…braking!

My early learning about braking in a kart was:

A. Yeah it’s necessary so you do it.

B. It also makes you crash if you get it slightly wrong, so be bloody careful

The brakes on a kart get you into trouble more than escape it. In an emergency they disable the rear of the kart entirely, making an accident go from quite likely, to certain.

So, the first thing we learn in karts - brakes don’t slow you down much and make you crash. If you get that done you go from Stage 1, brakes are not very good to…

Stage 2. Boss your brakes!

Someone like me today, comes along and says let’s get over being scared of brakes and crush them into submission. Instead of being careful, jump on the brakes.

Get them locked, smoking and screeching and control the slide. Master the brakes by learning how to go out of control, then release them to regain control.

Because it’s no good at all to race whilst being wary of the brakes, which about half the grid usually is!

And yes, when you go through that process it’s a tremendous liberation, and frankly cool AF. One of, if not THE, most enjoyable aspect of driving a kart.

You got over being tentative with the brakes to learning how to boss them.

The important and liberating aspect being ‘getting off the brake to gain control’ after inducing a slide.

Stage 3 - Everything about braking changes again!!