When to use brake / hand brake for corners?

[Samer Sultan]

Whats the correct time to use the hand brake / foot brake for making corners? Or should you use both?

[Plaskus]

There isn't a specific braking spot. It's all about how you feel when you should brake. A tip is to only use handbrake in hairpins. Otherwise it's practice, practice, practice.

[rob_every05]

Depends really on your style.

I tend to use the handbrake quite a bit in 4wd cars as they all seem to understeer too much for me. I will often just tweak the handbrake to tighen the line and get an earlier exit from even a fairly open corner.

But it depends on the car and the style you drive in, the handbrake is actually not much use in 4wd on hairpins and even less use in fwd as it just makes the car push on unless yoou use the clutch. Bad programming.

[eddskitz]

Originally posted by TesseracT:

Whats the correct time to use the hand brake / foot brake for making corners? Or should you use both?

Watch YouTube videos on how to rally

[Chaining Tatum]

On gravel I like setting a rear brake bias to remove the need for a hand brake but it really depends on how you're attacking the corner

[controlinterval]

All depends on the corner, if it's at least a 3 turn you should be left foot braking to rotate the car but for most 2's/1's/hairpins etc you should flick to the opposite direction of the corner, throw the car into the corner, brake heavily, pull the handbrake and release the footbrake and get as much throttle down as possible when you hit the apex.

[JD798]

depends on how fast you're going . practice corners- around say 40 MPH- 90 % bends you take without braking- on a long straight coming to a 90% or hairpin 90 MPH you will need to brake before the bend -never brake on the corner- the car wont turn - its practice- flick your steering wheel as you approach the bent -as the car goes broadside- accelerate the same time ,
driving wheels pulls round the corner-its not easy, takes a lot of practice-but its possible

[Marius]

You could setup your car that way that you only need to steer and press clutch+brake to tackle that hairpin or corner. Another option is to rear-braking. At last if you really want some help youi can always use handbrake; on/off or analoge.

[wholemealhepple]

Originally posted by TesseracT:

Whats the correct time to use the hand brake / foot brake for making corners? Or should you use both?

Both is a bit extreme. Handbrake when the foot brake and/or gas pedal are not enough to pull the front end in... Savvy?

[MattStone]

I always set up the front suspension of the car softer then the rear to facilitate good weight transfer to the front wheels under braking

So my first priority is to get the weight transferred to the outside front wheel as I approach and start to turn around the corner which in turn gives more grip on the front tire and produce a more control slide of the back wheels

If that isn't turning the car fast enough (usually because I've approached the corner too fast or had an untidy entry) then I stab the hand brake but that does result in a more pronounced slide that washes of more speed and looses more traction. However even to successfully pull off a handbrake turn you still need that weight on the outside front tire

So I only use the handbrake when I can feel the car isn't going to turn hard enough. Even hair pins won't require the use of the hand brake if you get corner approach perfect and that weight on the outside front tier

I occasionally stab the hand brake mid corner if I'm in real trouble.


Finally I've found that you should only ever just stab the hand brake. NEVER hold it on for more then a fraction of a second.

[a basic bitch]

Look up left foot braking.


Handbrake is for 90 degree corners and sharper.

Tuning a car before you can even reliably slide the back end out without using the handbrake is a good way to give yourself bad habits and limit your ability to get faster.