Acceleration and braking

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.

🏎️ 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 🤖