BRAKE vs NO BRAKE Indoor Karting Experiment

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[kartingtips]

I did this same experiment at an outdoor Karting track 👇

[CurtisHuffman-cjqm]

Mario Andretti once said he was amazed by how “drivers still think the brakes are for slowing the car down”. Brakes are for going faster!

[HunterTeam]

"slow in, fast out" is the best way ever. No more

[Workinprogressmaxi]

Brakes allow for forward weight transfer. In a kart it's important to lift the inside rear wheel to free the engine as it does not have a diff. The outside wheel allows faster wheel speed thus engine speed. More engine speed means the engine will be closer to it's optimal engine speed and you will be faster out of the corner. Now sliding keeps both rear tires on the ground and also means your speed is = to the average speed of both tires. It could work for corners that you are opening up, but at that point you shouldn't be slowing down anyway.

[eleazarmorenovera]

I did the same mistake, I didn't brake because I thought lost engine power, but 2 years ago I started to train the braking and taking references points, and improved more than 1 second per lap. And I learned a important sentence, SLOW IN FAST OUT!!!

[skipwilson]

Good Video ! I have counseled people in the past that are fairly new to karting to run laps without braking to try to learn smoothness and then add braking sparingly, because as a novice it is easy to use too much brake.

[ilovethehelpdesk]

I did this recently. Did some practise runs with friends. They were more accustomed to the "cruising" style, staying off the brakes. Gently slowing for a corner, no brakes, gently speed out. I was taking the opposite approach: hard on the brakes late in the corner, twist the kart around, hard on the gas exiting. My lap times were faster by a second or two on a small track.

My approach is probably harder on the kart - the brakes and tyres - but it was slightly faster.

[rcsx]

I just started karting and this has been one of my questions but I've had no one to ask. This is amazing thanks!

[Mittis_bot]

I would say this aspect of "Not Braking" is more or less depenent on the karts and tracks. I have been to indoor places where you quite literally cannot make some corners without using the brakes, and other tracks where there are 0 braking points on the entire hotlap. K1 for example you can pretty much take the entire hotlap without touching the brakes as the motor slows the kart down enough to make most corners.

[denzilv]

Thanks for sharing your experience! With the karting tracks I've raced at, lift is enough to get the balance shifted and not decelerate too much. The karts decelerate too much otherwise and can't accelerate out of turns as quickly as other karts I've seen. 🤙

[cyclone]

I work at a go kart track. its amazing how many people think not pressing the brake is faster. Its counterintuitive but the better you are at slowing down, the faster you’ll go.

[lukasgerhardstiel]

What I have to say about this, it really really depends on the track layout. If you’ve only got medium speed- and flat out corners, you should use the breaks, but you don’t necessarily need to. But on a tight and twisty track, you would be stupid not to break

[earlebird]

I'm a very heavy guy, and I almost never use brakes on indoor karts. I'm so heavy that if I let the drive axle slow down the motor takes forever to get back up to speed. I'm much faster if I move the seat all the way forward and lean forward at every turn entry. That let's the rear slide out with less steering input, and it keeps the rear wheel speed up so I'm not bogging the motor down. The first time I discovered this, I went from 1:07 to like 0:99 and change. I started passing guys who weigh 50 lbs. less.

[fernandodeloskikachinski]

dude pulled out the smoothest drift i've ever seen with no brakes, i'm gonna drive like this now

[leonard_y]

In my years of rallying with keyboard, I find braking is needed to position the car, deliberate weight shift, speed check through tight spaces, and to not plow through spectators.

[BendApparatus]

Funny story (I'll keep it short)
Years ago I was in a err... juvenile correction center (CORRECTION not detention) and for recreational things they would take us as a group on "field trips"...we went to a cart racing circuit.
These were older style carts not the ultra fast ones they got now.
There were more of us than there were carts. So we had to wait in line for a turn.
I kept noticing they had this one cart that they kept to the side the only one.
I asked what was wrong with it. One of the guys there told me that the brakes were completely gone.
I said can I ride it anyway? He was like sure, you just won't have breaks, no one else wants to ride it. Not only was I the fastest guy on the course... I never had to wait in line to ride... I just kept on riding as everyone else kept on getting on and off and waiting in line for their next turn...lol

[scooble]

I also like to squeeze the brake lightly when the rear wheels are spinning. I find it acts better as a traction control than lifting off the gas.

[bc]

I beat every friend who prefers not to use brake in karting. Very simple logic, without braking to help reduce the speed, you need to reduce your gas earlier before entering a corner while i m still giving full throttle.

[curlsalot]

as i learned, a racer needs to master being fast on brakes or better, they are fast because they know how to decelerate. this exquisite video showcases that theory.

[PatricioGarcia]

it depends what kind of karting and track too. in direct drive karts you try to brake as little as possible, because you lose all momentum, plus you have brakes only on the rear axle.