As far as trail-braking is concerned, I have found very little use for it in
my Miata. If you're driving something with either near-perfect or
rear-biased weight distribution, trail-braking is more likely to spin you
out than gain you any time. But it could help with a nose-heavy car, such
as your typical ass-dragger, er, um, front-wheel drive car (or an AWD car,
since most on the market are based on ass-draggers), if you need to rotate
the car into a turn.
But generally speaking, there's maybe one turn in 100 where trail-braking
gains you anything worthwhile in an autocross. Now road racing, on the
other hand, there's plenty of uses for it! Mostly when you're passing a
competitor on the brakes.
Not that I've done much actual road racing, mind you. Mostly I'm a sim
jockey.
Scot
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Ciarcia" <veloimpreza@yahoo.com>
To: <kirkm@zeta-idt.com>; <ba-autox@autox.team.net>
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 2:24 PM
Subject: RE: The hardest autox skill?
> There seems to be two schools of thought on that. I
> generally try to do most of my braking in a straight
> line but I have no problems with a little bit of trail
> braking (especially on the entrance to a high speed
> sweeper). As for braking during the corners... how
> long has it been since you've experienced the joys of
> turbo lag. ;-)
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