Where the grid loses time: the 2026 braking report
We read three million braking events from the SimGains grid. The two tenths hiding in every lap aren't where most drivers think they are.
Every driver believes they know where they lose time. Ask a hundred of them and you'll hear the same three corners, the same shrug about "just needing more laps." So we stopped asking and started reading — three million braking events, captured automatically from the SimGains grid across the first half of the 2026 season.
The picture that came back is not the one most drivers describe. The time isn't lost at the apex, or on exit, or in the corners people complain about. It's lost in the first eight metres of the braking zone, before the car has even started to rotate.
The myth of the late brake
The popular story is that fast drivers brake later. In the data, they mostly don't — not by much. What separates the top decile of laps from the median isn't the brake point; it's the brake shape. Quick drivers hit peak pressure almost immediately, then bleed off the brake in one smooth, continuous release all the way to the apex.
Slower drivers do the opposite. They squeeze up to pressure gradually, hold a plateau, then release in two or three steps. That stepped release is the single most expensive habit on the grid.
You don't find the two tenths by braking later. You find them by trusting the front tyre earlier and letting the brake off in one move.
Three corners, one pattern
We grouped every braking zone in the dataset by type — heavy stops, medium-speed entries, and long fast-corner brushes. The pattern held across all three:
- Heavy stops reward an aggressive initial hit and an early, linear release. Coasting here is rare but catastrophic when it happens.
- Medium entries are where the season is won or lost. This is where stepped releases cluster, and where corner-insight callouts fire most often.
- Fast brushes punish over-braking more than anything else — most drivers scrub 4–6 km/h they never needed to lose.
What "good" looks like
A clean medium-entry brake, in the data, is boring. One firm application, one unbroken release, front tyre loaded the whole way. No drama, no correction, no second stab at the pedal. The laps that feel the least heroic are almost always the quick ones.
Where the season goes next
The braking report is the first of a series. Over the rest of 2026 we'll publish the throttle report, the mid-corner rotation report, and — the one everyone keeps asking for — the consistency report, where we'll finally put numbers to why some drivers can repeat a lap and others can't.
All of it is built from laps recorded automatically, stored locally, and analysed on your own machine. If you're on the grid, your data is already writing the next chapter.
