Why F1's Halo Graphic is WRONG 

Favorite F1 graphic is the AWS ‘distance to the wall’. Says they’re a couple cm from the wall when the driver clearly just hit it

I am hoping that sometime in the future we will get an actual brake trail reading and not just an on-off reading.

Scott's made a pretty decent career out of explaining what trail braking is over and over

I read on a forum that they show the braking like that because it's one of the few things that teams are still keeping secret from everyone. If they show the actual percentage of brake pressure it may disclose different engineering techniques/secrets, but the pedal cam was shown for a while though.

Mario Andretti also famously once said, ‘If you feel like you’re in control, you’re not going fast enough.’

I was taught to imagine the steering wheel and brakes/throttle are connected, as you turn the wheel you lift the brake / trail braking, and the same out of the corner, as you wind off the lock you can press on the throttle. Was one of the best bits of info I ever got, simple advice but it helped me a lot - ok its a starting point, but it was easy to build on and exploit how that influenced balance through a corner.

The title of this video should have been “the trail braking technique”

I learned about braking forces when I did a driving experience at Silverstone in a Lotus Europa. Going into Stow too fast I managed to cross the corner almost backwards, my instructor’s face was ashen. At the end of the day he took me round the circuit at racing speed hoping to get his own back, trouble was I loved it. 😂

They’re not lying per se. It’s my understanding an agreement was made to show the brakes on off to keep private just how the car balance was being handled by each driver and team, where a weakness or strength may be, or engineering design secret etc.

This is THE most difficult thing to learn in high performance driving. It's the part of driving that requires feel. Everything else is pretty much mechanical. The reason track driving is so addictive for me is because this part of it is so damn complicated to get right. And conditions are always changing.

just went karting a couple hours ago. not at all on the same level but practising the braking while cornering was one of my favourite parts

I always assumed that this was done this way so the drivers could keep their braking traits private from everyone else. So much laptime is found or lost on the brakes. So you wouldnt want anyone copying your ways.

Title is wrong. You never explain why, just how

Been waiting for you to break down the art of brake and throttle through different turns. Kind of makes me respect the growth that Logan Sergeant had through the year, competing against the best of the best. REALLY makes me appreciate the guys like Max, Lewis, Fernando… because all these drivers can navigate the complex equation, but those at the top do it faster, cleaner, and just all around better lol. It’s insane. I bet their ankles and their calf muscles are knotted after a race.

Unfortunatly this is an issue since they introduced that throttle/brake graphics back in 2004/2005 or when this was. Would be cool to see the differcences

I remember on a broadcast they were talking about it being due to brake by wire, how much of the braking is by the brakes vs energy recovery, and they didn't want to reveal how energy recovery mapping is set or something to that effect. But that didn't really make sense for hiding the indicator because for the indicator/broadcast we don't care how the slowing down is achieved, just how much is being demanded by the driver. The teams could just map the applied pressure range on the pedal to a 0-10 score while hiding everything that's going on in the background to not reveal anything.

Fascinating! Thanks for such an informative peek into managing a race car. I've often read the term 'trail braking' in car magazines, but didn't understand its purpose until now.

This is one of the first things taught at motorcycle safety training. The front tire can’t give 100% braking and 100% turning at the same time. Side note; trail braking into a corner on a bike actually greatly changes the steering trail (caster angle) and makes the steering input even lighter to steer tighter.

Informative video, though very clickbaity in nature "The graphic is completely wrong" as opposed to "There is this one minor technical detail that you likely never noticed because you were just looking at the speed".

Thank you! This has been driving me nuts for years now, and nobody talks about it for some reason. I assume that the teams don't want the full brake traces made public, but plenty of other series have the correct graphic...

Just turn off ABS on the F1 game and you‘ll see that you HAVE to trail brake in order to not lock the tires

This is wild... I started my in-real-life racing in Formula 1 Sidecars (very fast, roadcourse, 3 wheels) coming from a background in motorcycle racing with no automotive racing experience at all, not even a car trackday. I was taught due to the nature of the F1 sidecar chassis geometry that I could either be on the throttle or on the brakes. I needed to learn how to blend both together seamlessly for both braking and acceleration. If I was off both and coasting the chassis would be very unstable. My first season in the cockpit as a driver (first 3 seasons were spent as a passenger) I had several close calls where I did not have the chassis balanced correctly because I was coasting instead of blending the throttle and brakes. By the start of my second season I'd got into the habit of blending the throttle and brakes and my primary focus was on how fast and smooth I could make the blend happen without breaking traction into, around, and out of corners. My third season I'd learned how to vary the throttle and brake input to rotate the chassis at will into, around, and out of the corners. With all that said... I am fairly new to sim-racing and your video has just made it click for me why I seem to get a lot of players into and out of technical / hard corners and chicanes. Very cool video!

Getting an youtube ad during a chanel sponsor ad is something I've never experienced before.

Always thought about this ever since i saw the braking graphic for the first time, i never knew the reason why the brake pressure isn't shown at all

I knew something had to be wrong. You always hear about the importance of trail braking, but then you see those graphics and think, damn, why those guys don't do it?

When I was a BMW technician,I won a track day at Brands Hatch through a BMW competition. On the day we had five laps in a Sunbeam Lotus, and then five laps in a Formula Ford. In the Sunbeam Lotus my instructor was none other than a young “Tim Harvey” he did five laps and then I had a go. I knew then that I would never have been a racing driver. I enjoyed my laps in the Lotus Sunbeam,but my laps in the single seater formula Ford were a nightmare. To see these guys at work,Cornering,Braking,etc. There is no way that I would have wanted to get into motor racing. All credit to these guys.World Champions,club racers.Any guy who races cars,or Bikes, deserve credit for their courage,and skill. No matter what series, from club level to F1.

The binary brake graphic has annoyed me for ages. As pointed out by Scott, it's not representative of what's happening. But I'm doubly frustrated because brake pressure has definitely been measured electronically; these are brake-by-wire cars (and the teams would have been recording this before BBW too). And it just makes me think there's been an agreement or compromise made where the teams have been allowed to keep the finer braking telemetry private.

Great video mate 👍 a motorcycle road racer once told me “go slow into the corner to exit it fast, if you go in too fast then you ain’t coming out of it!”

Another piece of golden content, thanks Scott Any chance you could analyze the different braking curves needed to get the most from RWD vs FWD vehicles?

Tbh I have been thinking this ever since that graphics came around. Sure in the beginning I thought it was correct but then I realized the drivers can't use the brakes as an on/off switch like either 0 or 100 percent braking as it shows. It made no sense.

Hi Another great video. Please do a video comparing the styles of Lewis and Max. I would also like to see one on Leclerc. Why is he so quick?

I really do hate it when people state something is a lie, when it isn't, A lie is a deliberate act to deceive, they are not lying, they are simply not giving the whole information, the viewer only needs to know if the brake is on or off , they don't need to know how much, acceleration happens over a longer time so it's easier to show it's graduation. But why not click bate it to give another explanation of how trail braking works.

A perfect explanation of how drivers use weight shifting to turn! I knew that you never use maximum braking to turn and that you use max acceleration to put all the weight on the rear wheels, but I did not realize that you also use a little bit of braking to help you around the corner. It seems that, rather than braking and throttle lights, what you need is a G-meter.

That was what I was trying to tell my lecturer and classmate. My lecturer said that his car steering got very sensitive( he explained it by saying that his steering inputs started to get more sensitive and it was twitchy) at some point when going 120kph in the neighboring country. They were attributing to lift. Even though lift would do the opposite. Also like 120? The 20kph difference in how fast they drive here isn't going to cause enough of a difference in lift anyway. Essentially they've never driven on a long enough straight and flat road to feel when the car weight becomes balanced and there's more grip in the front than while accelerating, especially in a fwd. They also said some weird things about Japanese cars being less stable than continentals. Our car at the time was Japanese, a Q50, while Infiniti is kinda an American brand, we all know the cars are just rebadged and retooled Nissans that they don't sell outside Japan. It never had that issue. Heck, it was way more stable than our Citroen now. There are many things that change how a car behaves. Dunning-Kruger effect it seems.

When I was younger and just starting to drive I watched a lot of nascar and Mark Martin would talk about these principles of driving. I guess this is a version of “slow is fast”

You just explained how they’re lying to us but not why What is the reason they don’t show how much break pressure is actually used

I can live with that but the graphic that needs addressing is the stupid car corner box markers

I noticed this early on when the graphics changed. I'm struggling to remember if the braking graph displayed something more accurate previously. Perhaps that was the case, because it felt much more obvious braking wouldn't be on/off, even with the cars going through such massive changes thanks to a shakeup in regulations. Starting watching F1 late 2012. So have witnessed not only TV graphic changes, but different channels and commentators broadcasting within the US.

Really good explanation of what goes on under braking, but WHY doesn’t the graphic show that? Why does graphic only signal on/off?

6:51 I've also thought that the closer you get to slowing to a stop, the less brake pressure you need, like an exponential, if that makes sense

2:56 Probably best not to tell outright lies in your ad spots. Jackery capacity is 3024 watt-hours, the 2x 200W included solar panels PEAK at 400 watts, which means that it would take 3024/400 = 7.5 hours under near-impossibly-ideal conditions to charge from the solar panels, assuming 100% round-trip charging efficiency. That's practically an entire day, not "just a few hours".

i appreciate the on-screen HUDs as that area can be free from ads while the teams continue to try and fill every square millimeter of the screen space of an F1 broadcast feed with advertisements.

F1 broadcasts had more accurate brake and throttle graphics back then, at least in the mid-2000's I believe. Even if it wasn't perfectly accurate, you could have an idea of Schumacher's fancy footwork throughout the corners, for an example.

Best explanation I've ever had on the subject of braking. Thank you.

Been noticing that for a while now, and it turned out exactly how you said. Thanks for the insight!

My fave videos are where you explain technical skills in driving. I apply them to my sim driving and see immediate gains. Even for things I already "knew" your explanations make them much clearer.

I’m curious about feedback from the car during the straight line period as downforce decays. How does the driver feel the edge? How do they know they are just before a lockup. After turn in the can feel the car’s rotation and understeer or oversteer are pretty obvious and we see them sawing the wheel to correct. I just haven’t grok’d how they feel the limit being approached in straight line braking.

Heya, just wanted to add my two cents to this as someone who worked on the telemetry data and graphics for Formula 1. The binary nature the brake graphic is a specific design choice as the telemetry comes through in Nm (newton metres) in the telemetry. Since there is technically an infinite amount of pressure (obviously not practically) that can be put onto the brake pedal it is difficult to gauge what "100%" would be. This is especially true across all 20 cars as each driver has different brake pressure set ups and resistance in the pedal depending on their preference. It was deemed then for simplicity that the braking graphic should be binary with a small dead zone to activate. You can see the different design choices if you watch MotoGP where they have chosen to put it as a scale from 0 to 100. Otherwise good video, I enjoyed the explanation of the how the finesse of braking affects the car at different points of a corner!

thank you for another usefull tip when we go karting or sim racing, I hope one day we will meet @Winfield

i've learned so much from this channel. my crashes are with much lower speeds now :)

This basically tells you, if your pedal goes to the floor, or nothing at all, you have a problem 😂😂😂

Unfortunate they display brake as on or off rather than a scale That being said, to complete the discussion of balancing the car through a corner, it should also be pointed out that when you are no longer braking but beginning to accelerate, you are now using the throttle to maintain the balance of the car through the latter portion of the corner in the reverse process of how the brake was used. And just like some people treat the brake as a binary control with bad results, some people seem to treat the throttle the same way with also bad, and sometimes worse results.

Nice explanation of trail braking, skill they teach you at every good driving academy/racing school

It's amazing the difference in lap time that can be achieved by learning good braking techniques and getting a feel for car balance going into a corner.

So where does the displayed data come from then, if its not actual braking data? What about the rest, throttle, speed, gear?

This is the hard part of driving karts at rental places... ...all the brake behavior pattern and tire grip varies by kart. So if you dont know the kart, it takes actual time with each kart to learn the balance...plus the maintenance guys arent worried about that stuff. Getting it right though is incredibly satisfying.

Big +1 that I wish the "brake" overlay was showing the real data. That being said, in your explanation of why braking is that important you incorrectly said that too much braking causes oversteer. Rather, too much braking causes understeer. Too little braking also causes understeer :D There is a range between "too much" and "too little" where braking can cause either oversteer in some corners, or "minimal possible understeer" in other corners. The main point of your video is correct: braking is a very important tool in maximizing car performance, and it's a shame that we don't get that information from F1.

Would it be ok to actually use the accelerator to perform the same balance in the corner on a FWD?

what i always missed in my uni lectures was a guitar solo when I'm trying to listen

Great explanation, very similar to a motorcycle, with weight transfer under braking and the finesse of the brakes

Wow I never noticed this. I knew the graphic was not well time-synced based on the engine sound but this is fascinating

Can you do a video on f1h20? Im very interested to see what you think about boats that go full throttle into hairpins

Brundle and Crofty they presented us with a pack of lies about the rules of the safety car procedure also somehow predicted 1 racing lap when it was supposed to finish behind the safety car

Great informative video... Love it.

And I'm sitting here, trying to apply this to karting and only recently learned that while physics are the same (duh) the approach you need to have for a kart is completely different due to the kart not having a differential.

Wish I'd seen this before my karting and track day attempts. Thanks.

FYI the Jackery link doesn't work.

My track coach told me, "go slow to learn to go fast", do one of two things, "accelerate or break, if you do something else, get off my track"

the other thing wrong with the telemetry on tv; it's always off by a couple miliseconds

I've noticed that, but why? Why do they remove 'analog' braking info?

To summarise 8:30 into 0:30: "The graphic shows a binary on/off for the braking, instead of the graded braking drivers actually do" Barely lying. It just shows viewers when the driver is braking. We don't need to know the Nm applied to the braking pedal, the translation into kilograms and for how long. We're happy with seeing that basic telemetry.

Now I know how it's lying to me, but I still don't know why...

Sim trail braking depending on game is a huge difference, and soooo key versus real world.

All of this is much understood and felt through so many of your body parts if you are on a motorcycle around a track or even your favorite twisty road at speed.

I've been questioning those pedal inputs since day 1.

Some drivers I would suspect of using the brakes as an on/off switch.

It's the same with simulators when we see other drivers cameras. Or when we see the replays. In the sim, brake pressure is never shown, only on-off. You can only see your own brake pedal, not anyone else's. I guess there's a reason they all want to hide that information from us.

Grip between road cars and gt3 cars are different, i am having trouble translating the sense of speed to judge the grip of the car. I think my setup is correct, well measured out according to the research (fanatec dd gt sport, v3 pedal, ps4, gt sport). Or my brain is just not accepting the fact of in-game mechanics yet such as tire temp and how grip feels on the wheel input. In general, grip is not really translating well to my brain yet, could someone guide where I am missing or I should look at?

Thanks for explaining this...jesus i am going to have to change the way i drive in SIM (fairly new to sim). I always dive bomb into turns brake hard into the Apex, then quickly let off the brakes to accelerate. Works ok, and i do well, but i destroy my tires too soon. thanks for the great video, im going to work on doing this.

Surprised it wasnt mentioned why the graphics are lying. My guess? It would give competitive information to other teams about the approach and handling of the corners, so they keep the braking graphic vague and inaccurate.

So your trail braking to allow the car to keep the set position through the turn.

I believe that F1 cars also respond slightly different. Many drivers have talked about stabbing the brake and coming off quickly for higher speed corners if I'm not wrong.

What about using throttle and break at the same time? I use it alot in gokarts

maybe for other people to understand more easy you use to brake to balance the car from front to back you need more force on the front wheels use the brake to let the car push on the front same with throttle but for the rear even in a normal small frontwheel drive hatchback going trew a corner at the limit with throttle so the car is pishing on the rear then you suddenly let go of the throttle and the rear comes up and you can have over steer yes even in a frontwheel drive car i think they call it lift oversteer

What annoys me the most is when they simply can't be bothered syncing the audio with the video and the gear shifts don't line up.

HAHAHAHA, back when i was a Motorcycle Roadracer, my buddy's girlfriend proclaimed: "Racing isn't hard, you just get a fast bike, and ride it fast!". Yes. 😂

Loved the video, but that isn’t *why * they’re lying to us… it’s just showing that they are, I’d imagine it’s a bandwidth thing? Or a rendering thing, idk

Yes & it's made even more complex with the KERS system.

I noticed this too and im annoyed by it every time it comes on screen. It could be a great addition if done correctly

well that is the obvious part for many sim/racers :) thank you for clearing out for everyone. but one major issue is the sync. i guess that is also worth mentioning because braking and accelaration points seem to be rather different than what the drivers are actually doing :)

if cars had 4 wheel steering with similar angle front and back, they would have same load on front and rear tire and max cornering speed would happen while just maintaining constant speed? Also instead of lifting the rear interior wheel, you could technically lift both interior wheels and corner like a motorcycle at an extreme lean angle? 😮 I guess it would only make a big difference in really tight corners where the front wheels do have a significant steering angle and do corner around a significantly larger radius. but I'm still curious to see if it could allow to push the limits of cornering ? of course in F1 cornering speed comes from downforce but with car being aligned with it's instant speed I guess aero would work better too..

I enjoy watching this channel. But if I may make a suggestion; the rest of your production is high quality, but the clips from your Sim (iRacing?) is very choppy and low quality. Not only this video, but many other videos when you use Sim Clips. I appreciate not everyone has a powerful computer, but it would be better to run at a lower resolution and maintain at least 40-50fps to be smooth in processing, and even ACC can run very smoothly at 1440p or 4K with medium settings on most "average" gaming computers. Thank you for making your content.

those advice really help me understand a bit more my driving in GT7

If you want a prime example of this. There is a video of Aryton Senna taking the brand new NSX for a ride around the track and they had a camera in the foot box the man was wearing penny loafers and looked like Baryshnikov dancing on the pedals

Back when I still watched this "sport" I would ask people in steam chats by the brake graphic was showing 0/100 application and not trailbraking, and would never get an answer. That lack of genuine interest by its followers now seems very fitting for this "racing" series that has long become a financial competition in megacorporate advertising and has nothing to do with motorsport anymore.

if you really want to know how to control break pressure disable abs in a racing game it will help you know where the sweet spot of each cars breaking point before the tires start to squeal

I always thought they just didn't show brake pressure for confidentiality reasons

Can we get a nice pedal cam from you with real time brake inputs while we see where the car is turning in real life

Misleading title and there's a lot of differences between Touring, GT and Formula braking, it's very hard to go into details about F1 braking with how complex it is. 1. F1 have one feature that they call "handbrake" which is different maps/settings for engine braking to help to rotate the car and this alone make it very hard to compare the trail braking while turning. 2. The load distribution is not exactly 50/50, but specially the grip in F1 cars are definitely 50/50, rear tyres are 405mm and fronts are only 305mm, the initial braking you will have way more grip on the front because of the massive downforce and weight transfer to the front but the brake migration settings makes a huge difference on how each driver do the trail braking because the brake bias and the diff will change through the corner. 3. He doesn't explain why Schumacher was doing throttle while braking, it's something that some sim drivers do but not real drivers because it wears a lot of components and these days there is a limit of components to each car and back on the days most of the teams barely had money to run F1, the light throttle limits the engine braking and makes the car more stable. 4. 7:52 is wrong, there is a limit of grip and it's shared between braking and turning, if you brake more you will turn less, and that's understeer, but there is a placebo effect because if you brake more you will go slower and then it's easier to turn but not because you have more oversteer, you are just going slow. Also grip = friction = wear, the final trail braking can increase the wear which will make it worse for the next laps. Too bad this channel never talks about the increased wear caused by trail braking, and tyre management is as important as the braking technique, F1 drivers are rarely pushing to limits, the only exception was Qatar

so is formula 1 tv brake meter using just an on or off measurement?