Q: “My home track is Mosport (Canadian Tire Motorsport Park). One of the more challenging turns for me is the very fast Turn 8. What I find is that the rear gets loose when I try to brake later. Any help would be appreciated.”
A: If the braking makes your car get loose, you have two options:
- Change the setup of either the suspension or brakes so that doesn’t happen.
- Brake earlier and lighter.
Since I don’t know the details of your car, I can’t make any recommendations about adjusting your car’s setup (but check out my latest free eBook, How to Tune Your Car’s Handling: A Driver’s Guide at SpeedSecrets.com/eBooks).
This second option – braking earlier and lighter — works way better than most drivers think. Most drivers believe the only way to go faster is to brake later and harder, but that’s not the case at all times – and especially not for very fast corners like Turn 8 at Mosport (I love that corner – and the entire track!). In fact, a corner like Turn 8 – or just about any other fast corner – taunts us into braking later. But that upsets the balance of the car – the weight is loaded up on the front tires, and you have less overall grip when it’s like that.
I would start by braking a car length or two earlier, but lighter. By keeping the car balanced (the chassis/platform flatter – less weight transfer), it will have more grip, and therefore you’ll be able to carry more speed into the 8. And that’s the goal for 8 – carrying speed into it, since there is no straightaway after it. You may be surprised at how much more grip your car has if you brake lighter and keep the car better balanced.
Start by asking yourself, “On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being maximum braking (threshold, on the verge of ABS), how hard am I braking?” Then lighten that number up by one or two, over the next couple of practice sessions. Then, you may be able to lighten it up even a bit more. But use the numbers, because our brains like a target. For example, if you’re now braking at a “5” going into Turn 8, tell yourself to brake at a “4.” Then a “3.” And never forget that the flatter, more balanced you keep your car’s chassis, the more grip it will have.
Of course, this approach doesn’t just apply to Turn 8 at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park/Mosport. It applies to almost all fast corners.
At Mosort, the vertical camber of the road is as important as the horizontal. And, of course, a lot of the corners are blind. In corner 8, this is particularly important.
Just before entering corner 8, you go over the crest of a small hill. Most people are freaked out by entering a blind corner that fast, so they try to brake over the crest of the hill. That’s why your car gets loose. You are losing grip off the back of the hill. So then they back their braking up even more. Braking earlier and lighter will lessen the effect. But you are also shortening the straight.
A better way to deal with it is to brake after the hill and after the car settles. Then the car will not feel loose.
To do this, you should delay your turn-in for corner 8. Assuming the usual cones are out… Stay at the left of the track under the bridge and until the second cone. Then turn in. Then brake. Brake on a diagonal into the first apex turtles and trail-brake out the other side until you are comfortable going back to the gas.
This will probably have you turning in much later than you are used to. But that’s good. You are going to be pointed well into the corner before you brake. And you will have less of a corner to do. You also just made the straight 150ft longer…
This is a big change. So make sure you practice at a speed where you are comfortable. Then work your speed back up. If you scare yourself it will not work. But once you get used to it, you will be amazed by how little braking this corner requires.
This is the rare case where braking later will feel better than braking earlier. And it’s all because of camber.