Q: “I’ve heard the general wisdom that for high speed corners, you want to be on the gas – at least a little – to settle the car and have equal weight across all four tires. My question is how can a driver determine when a corner is fast enough to require that technique, versus trail-braking to the apex? Is it more about speed per se, or track surface, bumps and camber, or do you just try a conservative technique and see how the car behaves?” 

A: It all depends on the amount you need the car to change direction.

If you need to change direction a lot, like in a slow, tight, hairpin corner, then you’d trail brake to help rotate the car because you need to change its direction a lot. If it’s a faster, sweeping corner that doesn’t require a dramatic change in direction, then be on the throttle closer to the turn-in point.

Of course, there are some corners that are kinda “in between,” right? The only way to really know with them is to experiment – try one way, then the other. Generally, I try to use the on-throttle-early approach as much as I can, unless I can’t get the car to change direction enough. Then, I treat it more as a trail brake-to-rotate kind of corner. Over time, you get so you can just look at a corner and make a pretty good judgement of what type of corner it is.

The key is to realize – as you have – that not all corners should be driven with the same technique, and be willing and able to change how you drive them. It’s all about learning!

Want to brake better? My High-Performance Braking Technique playbook takes you through it step by step.