raymondu999 wrote:My point being; wouldn't you be able to carry much more speed if you had used all of the grip for lateral acceleration; rather than using some of it for braking?
Yes, but then you need to brake a little sooner to turn the wheel at the same time you release the brakes, both completely to make a line as round as possible from the outside to the apex and then to the outside again.
This technique has the advantage of a quicker cornering speed, but if you have good acceleration it´s faster to use the trail braking technique because you can brake later and even when you need to brake a little more because you need to make the line tighter it´s just an instant and you´re on the throttle again.
What´s quicker? It will depend on many factors, but one of the most important is the engine. For example in MotoGP, Moto3 bikes don´t use the trail braking technique because if they slow down too much they loose any advantage of the braking, for them round lines are much better to keep the momentum.
But MotoGP uses trail braking a lot because they aceelerate so fast than it´s worth slowing down a little more if that makes possible braking a little later.
Anyway it will depend on the corner speed, the corner lenght, the grip.... I guess in F1 trail braking is only used in slow corners, as downforce increase with a higher cornering speed, so any corner faster than.... 100mph?? must be taken with the rounder possible line avoiding any trail braking
Hope it makes sense, explaining this in english is a challenge for me
