Formula 1: The GOAT

“In single-seaters, or any motorsport that actively uses downforce, you need to master threshold braking in order to have a competitive pace. The better you are, the larger the gap will be between you and those who haven’t perfected it.

Usually, braking is gradual, where you start slowly and progressively increase the pressure as the car slows down. But in Formula cars, you do the opposite, as you start braking with maximum pressure the instant you transition from the throttle.

Why do you think it is like that?” Denis stopped mid-explanation and asked a question to see if Fatih was still paying attention or just looking like he was.

“Downforce,” Fatih said immediately, without even having to think, as it was something he had known even in his previous life.

“Correct. Downforce is the reason why, at high speeds, the wings are pushing the car into the ground, providing grip that allows you to use extreme brake pressure without locking the tires, because the air is holding the car down.

However, as the car slows down, downforce decreases, and if you keep the same heavy pressure, the tires will lock up, losing both grip and control. So, to avoid that, after the maximum pressure, you must slowly bleed or taper your foot off the pedal as the car slows. Good and great drivers are differentiated by how on the limit you can be as you taper your braking force. A good example of that is Lewis Hamilton, who likes to brake later than everyone but still manages to make the corner.

And at the risk of stating the obvious, the later you brake, the more time you end up spending at a higher speed, which continuously gives you an advantage.

But braking doesn’t end there. In theory, if we go with what we have just learned, you might think that braking is entirely done on the straight before turning the car into the corner. But doing that does nothing but lose you time, as other drivers will be trail braking. What is trail braking?”

This time, Fatih didn’t answer immediately, as he had to think of a good description for a second before he said, “Trail braking is carrying the brakes into the corner.”

“What a good description,” Denis said, chuckling for a moment, as it was short but concise enough to get to the point without beating around the bush.

“Although braking is mostly used for slowing down, the things happening in reaction to the slowing down can be used to your advantage if you know what you are doing.

The moment you start braking, the car undergoes a weight transfer to the front, giving the front tires more grip. So if you turn at that point, it will allow you to rotate the car much faster than if you jump off the brakes too early, as doing that would allow the front to pop back up and the weight to shift back to the rear, leading to understeer.

So to keep the advantage of the weight transfer for as long as possible, drivers slowly release the last 10–20% of brake pressure as they turn the steering wheel toward the apex.

In summary, the braking and turning part of the corner goes like this: you come in at a high speed, and the moment you reach your designated braking point, you brake with maximum force, then slowly taper the brakes. Once you reach a certain point in brake pressure, you turn the car towards the apex, finally completing the braking part of the corner as you immediately transition back to the throttle the moment you hit the apex. That is the general breakdown, and of course, it varies depending on the track conditions and the grip you have, so you will need to adjust it based on the situation.

However, that is not everything about braking, because the previous discussion assumes the brake bias is equal on both the front and the rear. Formula cars aren’t limited to that and allow for active brake bias changes during the race, which can be done even from one corner to the next.

If you set the brake bias more to the front, it will put more braking power on the front wheels, which leads to a very stable and easier-to-stop car in a straight line, but the downside is that it makes it harder to turn.

And if you put more brake power into the rear, it will help the car rotate into corners, but in return will make it “twitchy.” If the rear locks first, you will likely go spinning due to the pendulum effect.

So as a result, most drivers usually put about fifty-five to sixty percent front brake bias, but with the constantly degrading tires and the car getting lighter due to spent fuel, minute adjustments are needed constantly during the race. There is no one-size-fits-all brake bias, as each driver has their own favorite driving style, which in return requires a different brake bias setup to fully exploit their driving style.

And you will start discovering what yours is in the sim before fine-tuning it in real-world practice.”

Denis paused for a moment to get a breather before once again resuming.

“Now let’s talk about the aerodynamics side of things when it comes to braking. The moment aerodynamics enters the equation of racing, the counterintuitive concept of ’the faster you go, the better your brakes work’ comes into effect.

When you are at 140 mph, the wings create hundreds of pounds of downward force. This is what glues the tires to the track, but is also the same thing that allows for you to brake at maximum force without worrying that the tires will lock from the start…”

Denis slowly started referencing the matters that they had learned in the aerodynamics lesson in the first week, connecting them with the braking part of things as he showed how the effects of downforce can be used by the driver to gain as much as possible when it comes to braking.

To Fatih, this felt no different than seeing the pieces of the puzzle that he had gathered last week being used to create parts of the picture in ways that, although he now saw to be possible, at the start didn’t make too much intuitive sense, but now he finally and slowly felt them getting into position.

To his surprise, he had initially thought Apollo was also going to be teaching him the theory side of things, but Apollo didn’t even bring it up. When Fatih asked for a reason, Apollo had only said that what he was already learning in the real world was enough and continued focusing on helping him adapt to his new, upgraded abilities that pushed his senses to the maximum.

Thankfully, after keeping up with the hard work for a few weeks, he could finally operate normally and could now passively detune his senses back to their previous level when they were not needed to be at their maximum performance. He could now finally walk and converse in peace without his legs’ sensitivity telling him about the structure of the ground he was walking on in detail.

Or sit in silence without his ears capturing even the faintest sounds in his surroundings. If the surroundings were silent enough, his hearing had reached the sensitivity to hear his own heart circulating blood and more.

However, the moment he pushed his senses to their limit, the clumsiness and newness of them returned as usual, but with Apollo’s help, he was slowly adjusting to them at a gradual pace. He still had a long way to go before he could operate as he used to.

Others might have been in despair, but Fatih found it to be very enjoyable since this learning process also allowed him to fully understand the things his body could do at different levels, and he was very impressed every time they moved to the next stage, and he saw that his body could do more.

After about half an hour of talking about aerodynamic effects in braking, Denis finally moved to the next part.

“Left-foot braking. Although you have three pedals, you won’t be using one of them after the race starts due to the sequential gearbox handling the clutch situation once you start moving. So it is the best ground to familiarize yourself with left-foot braking and right-foot accelerating, though you most likely are already used to it since you used to do it in karting. But this time, it’s just that the legs are a lot closer to one another and sometimes even touch.

So, can you tell me why we use a single dedicated foot for each of the main pedals?”

“To remove the dead time it would take to move a leg from one pedal to another,” he answered swiftly.

“Good, it is a good thing to know why we are specifically doing something instead of just going with the flow, just because everyone else is doing it. Doing that leads to people continuously doing something the same way when there might be a better, faster, easier, and cheaper way to do it. So I hope you retain that curiosity and question everything on why it is done that specific way.”

“Yes, I will keep that in mind.”

“Good, let’s end our class here today.”