Acceleration and braking

🏎️ 1. Racing is about time gained and time lost

Acceleration helps a car gain time when exiting corners or on straights.
Braking helps a car avoid losing time when entering corners by reducing the braking distance.

A car that accelerates quickly but brakes poorly will lose time before corners.
A car that brakes well but accelerates poorly will lose time after corners.

👉 Both phases are critical: you enter every corner and exit every corner. Time is won or lost in both.

🧮 2. Performance is about the whole cornering sequence

A typical racing line includes:

Braking zone
Corner apex
Acceleration zone

Each part is dependent on the other:
If you can brake later (good braking), you carry more speed into the corner.
If you can accelerate sooner (good acceleration), you gain more speed exiting.

🟰 One is not more important than the other — they complement each other.

⚖️ 3. Track layouts require both

Different corners or tracks emphasize one more than the other:

Hairpins and chicanes test braking and low-speed acceleration.
Long straights after corners reward acceleration.
Sequences of corners may limit the benefit of acceleration if braking is poor and vice versa.

So, designing or setting up a race car needs balanced optimization.

🧠 4. In racing simulations (like iGP Manager)

Attributes like acceleration and braking are usually separate values, each influencing performance in their own way.
For best results, both need to be well-developed. Focusing on one creates bottlenecks.

✅ Conclusion

Acceleration and braking are equally important because they affect opposite but equally frequent phases of racing. Without strong performance in both, overall lap times will suffer — no matter how good the car is in one area. 

And don’t set up your car like a dragster, because:

🚫 Dragsters focus only on acceleration

They're built to go fast in a straight line.
No corners, no braking — just raw launch power.

🏁 But racing cars face a full lap:

Dozens of braking zones and corners.
Acceleration without braking = crashing or losing time.
Braking without acceleration = stuck behind slower cars.

✅ Balanced setup = faster lap times

In real racing and simulations like iGP Manager, every corner is a brake–turn–accelerate cycle. Ignoring braking is like building a race car that’s fast until the first corner — and then useless.

Happy racings 🤖

Interesting piece on the technical side of racing.

On #2;

I believe good acceleration out of the corner apex is overall faster, as you carry all that extra speed down the next straight. You take different racing lines as well (with that approach), taking an earlier corner apex, than the mid radius point.

A certain Michael Schumacher put massive emphasis on this :-)

Also to add: the overall handling and grip (mechanical for more low speed corners, downforce for more high speed corners) are also very important factors for the overall lap time.

The higher your average speed (especially your lowest speed) in the corner phase, can gain you a lot of lap time. Different ways to achieve this, especially on the drivers side. On my side, I do the Ayrton Senna quick throttle taps, mid corner, for my sim racing (with early 2000s F1 cars) Takes some getting used to, but gained about -1.00s/lap. Ted Meat, the YouTube sim racer does this technique as well.

The real challenge I think is to do Senna's technique with the 1980s turbo F1 cars (no traction control) Easier to do with early 2000s F1 cars with traction control.

You are absolutely right @Peter Man

🧠 1. Racing Involves All Types of Corners

Tracks aren't made of only fast or slow corners. Most circuits include a mix of low-, medium-, and high-speed turns.

Example: At Spa-Francorchamps, Eau Rouge requires downforce, but La Source (a tight hairpin) demands strong handling.

🟰 Without good handling, you're slow in tight turns.
🟰 Without downforce, you’re unstable in fast corners.

⚖️ 2. Balance is Everything

A car that's strong only in one area (e.g. fast corners) will be vulnerable in others (e.g. hairpins).

Handling and Downforce work together to create a well-balanced car that performs consistently across the lap.

✅ Final Thought:

🟩 Handling is your control in the slow and tricky sections.
🟩 Downforce is your grip and speed in high-speed corners.

⚖️ Together, they make a car fast, stable, and race-ready. 🤖

Love it. I think this should be pinned.