I did this same experiment at an outdoor Karting track 👇 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jLlnqNVpyMCyj4U.html

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!

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

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.

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.

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!!!

Fantastic videos, I’ve been wanting to try to understand how to drive fast, the explanations make it so obvious now! Thanks, keep up the good work 👍🏻👍🏻

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. 🤙

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

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.

interesting way to explain this! i love the comparison next to each other! this way it makes sense otherwise it was hard to understand why i kept being slower while i was not breaking!

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

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.

great experiment! loved to see your left foot dangling all the time 😂😂

Outstanding info! It explains a lot! 🏎👍🏾

nice video, looking forward to more

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.

great video as always!

2:28 it's all about managing the tire slip angles... 2:43 tires do not like big inputs (whether steering, braking, throttle)

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

Great video, alwasy makes me roll my eyes when people say they dont need to brake in karts

Definitely faster with breaking. looking forward to the next upload.

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.

Great demonstration of your driving skill that you were so close with no braking. But, of course, braking is essential to high speeds.

Yessss thanks bro ❤

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.

Love to watch your videos

Can u do a video on Indoor track ramps, I keep entering the ramp too fast while either entering a corner or exiting and my entire kart shudders and I know I’m roughly loosing a second per lap. Really enjoying ur videos btw

Good job

Some modern rental karts have a cut of system that allow you to keep full throttle when breaking. It will be a good comparaison to try the 2 tecniques (normal one and brake without lifting the accelerator). Ever wondered if this can save you some tenth of a second. Btw are you competing in SWS ?

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

There are some tracks where Braking is not needed but mostly Braking is where u find the difference between good and fast

With brakes you stop in front of the start. Without brakes, you get the tart.

bro thx for this I am going to go to the same track in about 30 mins

I was always taught to break before the turn and gas out. What’re your thoughts on this? Also does this change with other karts on the grid? I tend to break earlier and go outside and take inside.

Do you keep the throttle full on when breaking? Or you fully release the throttle?

I have been trying it 1980’s audi style where you always stay on the accelerator but do use the brakes.

Did you try getting out of the gas early before entering the corners when you didn't brake?

How is your cam set up on the helmet, is it chin or top

I like to let it whip when go karting, I'm not racing for 1st place but fun!

It depends... You can use the brake just to jab and "catapult" yourself info the corner going so much faster at the middle end of the corner having so much power.

2:55 Does braking to steer also work on an outdoor track?

I let off before the corner that’s all the braking I need and a bit of scrubbing. 😁 Most tracks don’t need literally any braking but the new electric karts scrubbing doesn’t matter as much because they have instant torque. The clutches in these crappy low powered karts need higher rpm to engage the clutch so that’s what kills your speed.

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.

Afaik when you're massively down on power for the track you barely need the brakes unless it's a slow corner

Is it faster to break and to let open the throttle at the same time?

Can you try this at Whiltoj Mill please? Preferably in a Kz2 rather then a rental, i need to know before open championship if it’s quicker to take christmas flat out at 100 mph, cheers

Hey! That's the San Francisco track!

SIFO : slow in, fast out, every racing driver knows that.

I just had this conversation the other day. I'll try braking next time.

Hi are you still in Doha currently? I just move here recently, 25second is insane, yesterday i tried the track only able to achieve 27.5, please inform me anytime you go karting either lusail or gondolania, i need to learn from you on the track.

thank you for these tips! one of my best friends is a rain motorcycle rider so he has a much more refined muscle memory feel for tyre grip and preventing drifts/slides than i do for these go karts. but i got few little tricks up my sleeve from years of watching red bull's daniel ricciardo and max verstappen constantly late breaking and bullying on valltterri bottas's faster merc. i am on avg still .1 tenth a lap slower than my bud in qualifying

I tried to explain this concept to a friend i teach to kart, that just because you can go around a corner and not use the brakes doesnt mean its faster to.

There is one more point to Using brakes. You warming up your tires and keep them in the right temperature. No good times, if tires’ temperature is wrong.

Is it a factor if your heavier as acceleration especially in the rental carts vs the lighter drivers is significant so I have found by not breaking on a super amateur level I can maintain speeds and less dependent on acceleration from the kart

Did you allow urself to lift on the no breaking lap?

I've never found use of brakes helpful in a kart but I've also never driven a kart that goes as fast as what you're driving here. I'm betting there is a line between lower performance karts and higher performance karts where braking begins to make a difference.

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

Do you stay flat out when you brake?

If you master not using the brakes to slow down, you will use less fuel but overall go slower which could be useful for an endurance race or out on the public roads. The more you slow down the more you need to speed back up the more fuel you use.

btw the no brake system does not work for outdoor rental karting at all, for those who are wondering.

I don't know... The tracks I've been to, if I touch the brakes then the cart's electric engine bogs way down and it takes a while to get it spun back up, where if I just let off the gas momentarily I can carry way more speed and keep the RPM's up.

There is also the lifting period, i didnt hear you mention that. You can lift and use your body to get the kart sideways. That way you dont need to brake but you carry less speed into the corner and go on the throttle earlier

So but what about letting off the gas instead of breaking? I normally do that instead at my karting

Nice video i missed the both laps time for comparison 😊

I thought you would brake with your foot in this video =D

How are you getting the car to rotate like that w the brakes? Is it 1 firm movement on the pedal or a few quick successive movements?

it's not about geting around teh corner fast, but abot being fast after teh corner

I raced go karts 1 time, 4 laps of braking and I was only able to improve by 1 second between lap 1 and 4, I went again without breaking and improved that fastest time by 4 seconds, idk I was absolutely ruthless and a madman with the no breaking turn, I don’t want to be rude and say it was your driving / mindset when you didn’t have the breaks but I got sideways a few times and my foot never left the floor lol it could also just be track layout but I also had 2 almost 90s like this track, I wouldn’t recommend it though what I did was pretty dangerous, I’ll have to add that I made every turn exactly how it needed to be made which is why it was dangerous, one mistake and I was getting walled 😂

I tried karting and didn’t use the brakes but it’s because I’ve gotten accustomed to driving an electric car which has regenerative braking. My first car was a manual stick shift

Betcha Daniel wishes he opted for 'no brake' at Zandvoort, hur-hur.

But what about just rolling through the entry of each corner as in just letting off the gas or feathering the throttle? It sounds like you are just holding it wide open through the whole lap and using extreme steering to slide the car and scrub speed off.

Takumi disagrees eurobeat intensifies

in villagio mall track my best lap is 27.50sec

What about letting off? How does it affect? Because sometimes letting off helps rotate the car without slowing down as much as with braking

Were you lifting off

Did that before at K1 speed lol. I couldn’t pass one guy. 2 of us was the fastest than any one so i tried go no brake lap and started losing him then next lap, I started using brake and caught up with him. Then had to figure out how to pass him. It was fun.

Your leg on the no brake lap looks like your getting the best head

I think the point is when they say "no braking" is little braking, cuz u wanna have the rpm high, so u only brake at the braking point and for a short while. that is faster than both styles in this video.

this is also why its important to match the kart's power to the complexity of the sections you're going through, i have no interest in a course that never requires you to hit the brakes

It just depends on the track and the kart

i always wanted to figure out how to brake, when i brake i either lose too much speed or i brake hard like in an f1 car and spin out of control, or dont brake at all, this has changed my driving style, thank you Ktips.

video was over after the first minute

No arguing with the points made here, since there is no denying the benefits of braking. But on the flipside, there are indoor carts out there with underpowered engines that are incredibly slow to pick up (the non electric ones with too little torque at low RPM), in which case braking less or no braking means you can keep the RPM in the optimum range for much faster pick up out of corners. That can more than compensate for the downside of not braking mentioned here. Again, it depends on the carts. With most indoor cart tracks moving or having moved to electric, this argument has indeed been settled though.

One pedal driving for electric go kart requires experience and it's faster as I tried it today

Breaking is one of the best solution of the car and u cant break the right times or you get car accident or any body injury's breaking is the right choice in every road F1 or gokart any public road

So basically you want to avoid making your kart shudder around turns or slide, and you do that by quickly braking to get the speed down to just the right amount in order to be able to take whatever corner you’re at smoothly, right? There’s no really hard or fast rule other than try to go as close to this smooth limit as possible? Explains why my first time karting I was going flat out but was still slower than some lol.

You are getting slower times without using the brakes because you are still driving the cars the same way you do with brakes. Try entering the turns wider and turning sharper once you hit the apex while also powering through, full throttle as soon as you turn sharply. The reason you are slowing down while skidding g is because you lost momentum by turning in before the apex due to your position so close to the smaller portion of the curve.

but you should have lifted for braking corners during the NO BRAKE laps for better comparison

No break for daily drive, for fuel saving 😂

you can drive 80% all indoors "hobby-tracks" without braking, but it is not always faster

Your leg was destroyed the aerodynamic, that's why slowed 😂

In my experience it has to do with the track layout, kart, and weight

The throttle "curve" in rental karts is usually quite poor as it's usually done by cable. Try to learn to modulate your throttle, one long lift to 70 or 60% is usually better than the complete short lifts. Try to visualise the pedal to an actual percentage and listen to the engine noise, make small variations every lap and feel/listen to the effect they have.

While I am not on any side (breaking vs non-breaking), it would be interesting to know how many laps the driver took with and without braking, to get an idea of his familiarity with the driving style. The other thing I observed is he held his left foot high up, I wonder what impact that had on his driving.

People love bragging about not braking in karts and it makes me cringe like nothing else. It tells me they just watch F1 sometimes and think they know something but actually have no idea about racing beyond a surface level.

Traction is a coefficient of three factors: Braking, accelerating, and handling. This coefficient can only max out at 100% ie; only up to 100% of the tires grip can be used at any given moment. Only doing one of the three factors at any given time gets you the most grip for that application. Introducing multiple factors at the same time, such as braking and turning, the grip is split. This is referred to as "balance." This being said and agreed upon, I think the major contributing factor to your results here is your driving stile off-brake. You compare the two videos, and you actually have more off throttle time than brake time in the braking run, and more off-throttle time than the "no-brake" lap. Your time increases in the corners and fast exits and rotation are due to the off-throttle time. If you recreate the "no-brake" run but focus on making up for the no-brakes by just lifting and rotating (instead of just gassing all the way to the brake point), the results will be much less dramatic and much closer. Especially in a gokart. Things get weird with LSDs and modern transmissions. (You can slow the car down with engine resistance off-throttle and not sacrifice traction coefficent).

brake serves an important purpose called weight transfer.

I race at the villago track. Fastest lap time is a 26.905 Still a noob lol but i will learn from this video and get a better lap

Go kart riders who dont brake usually the one who dive bombs you unannounced.