- A braking zone starts where the brake passes 10% and ends when it drops below 5%; a press that never reaches 15% is a dab, not a braking point.
- Each zone is seven numbers: brake point, entry speed, minimum speed and the gear there, peak pressure, zone length and time on the pedal.
- Against a faster lap, read the brake point Δ and minimum Δ together: they tell braking too early from braking too late from simply slowing too much.
- Across a session, a brake-point spread — the standard deviation of where you brake — above about 10 m is worth fixing before you move the brake point later.
Why braking zones decide lap time
A braking zone is the densest few seconds of a lap. In 150 metres the car sheds 150–250 km/h, turns in, finds its slowest point and starts accelerating again — and every one of those phases can be done a little early, a little late, a little too hard or a little too soft. A straight has one way to be driven; a braking zone has dozens.
That is also why braking zones are where comparisons pay off first. On a straight two drivers in the same car do the same thing. In the braking zones they do not, and the differences are measurable: where the pedal went down, how hard, how much speed was scrubbed, how long the car spent slow.
How a braking zone is found in the data
The brake trace is a pedal position from 0 to 100% at every sample of the lap. Turning it into a list of corners needs three rules, and StintLab's are these:
- A zone starts at 10%. The first sample with the brake at 10% or more is the brake point.
- It ends below 5%. Two thresholds instead of one, because drivers modulate the pedal: a single line at 10% would chop one braking event into three every time the pressure wobbled around it.
- It must reach 15%. A press that never gets past 15% is a dab — settling the car, a nervous twitch — not a braking point, and it is left out.
Then StintLab looks for the corner's slowest point: the minimum speed from the brake point to 120 m past the pedal release, because in most corners the slowest moment comes just after you come off the brake, not while you are still on it. The gear you were in at that point is kept too.
The seven numbers that describe a braking zone
| Column | What it is | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Corner at | The brake point: where the brake first reached 10%, in metres from the line. | Whether it moves lap to lap — and against a faster lap, which way. |
| Entry | Your speed at the brake point. | A lower entry means the previous corner's exit cost you speed down the straight. |
| Minimum | The slowest point of the corner, and the gear you were in there. | The most important number in the table. Over-slowing is the most common loss. |
| Peak brake | The highest pedal pressure in the zone. | A low peak with a long zone often means pressure built too gently. |
| Zone | Metres from the brake point to the release. | Longer than a faster lap's usually means earlier or softer braking. |
| Time | Seconds on the pedal. | Time spent slowing the car down is time not spent going fast. |
| Brake point Δ · Minimum Δ | With two laps: how many metres later or earlier you braked, and how many km/h faster or slower you were at the slowest point. | Read together — see the patterns below. |
Reading one corner: same brake point, slower apex
Here is the corner at 2,440 m from the worked example — the target lap in cyan, your lap in orange:
Nothing about where this driver brakes is wrong. The problem is what happens after: the car is slowed further than the corner needs, the throttle comes back later and softer, and the lap pays for it all the way down the next straight. Moving the brake point later here would be exactly the wrong fix — the data says to brake at the same place and carry more speed through the slowest point.
The full table for the lap tells the same story at three corners:
| Corner at | Entry | Minimum | Peak brake | Zone | Time | Brake point Δ | Minimum Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 m | 305 kph | 88 kph · G2 | 87% | 160 m | 3.71 s | same point | −10 kph |
| 1,640 m | 320 kph | 115 kph · G3 | 84% | 160 m | 2.93 s | same point | −1 kph |
| 2,440 m | 320 kph | 140 kph · G3 | 84% | 160 m | 2.68 s | same point | −10 kph |
| 3,300 m | 308 kph | 127 kph · G3 | 87% | 160 m | 3.04 s | same point | −1 kph |
| 4,240 m | 320 kph | 150 kph · G4 | 84% | 160 m | 2.60 s | same point | −10 kph |
Brake point Δ and minimum Δ, read together
Either number alone can mislead. Together they usually say which of a handful of habits you are looking at. These are the common combinations against a faster lap in the same car:
| Brake point Δ | Minimum Δ | What it usually means | What to try first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earlier | About the same | Braking too early and arriving at the corner slow too soon. | Move the brake point later in small steps, keeping the same minimum. |
| Same | Lower | Over-slowing: too much pressure late in the zone, or staying on the brake too long. | Same brake point; release sooner and carry more speed to the apex. |
| Later | Lower | Braking too late, then scrubbing the extra speed off — often running wide. | Go back to the earlier point; the late brake is costing, not saving. |
| Later | Higher | A faster entry — worth it only if the exit is not compromised. | Check the exit speed and the delta 100–200 m after the corner. |
| Same | Same, but slower overall | The time is not in the braking at all — look at the throttle on exit. | Compare throttle pick-up and the speed at the end of the next straight. |
Repeatability: how far your brake point wanders
A single comparison shows one lap's braking. Across a session, the more useful question is whether you brake in the same place every lap. StintLab's printable session report takes each braking zone of your best lap, finds the same corner on every other counted lap (the nearest zone within 150 m), and shows how much the brake point varies — the standard deviation, in metres.
| Corner at | Entry | Minimum | Peak brake | Zone | Time | Brake point varies | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 m | 304 kph | 83 kph · gear 2 | 87% | 160 m | 3.84 s | ±16 m | 6 |
| 1,640 m | 320 kph | 114 kph · gear 3 | 84% | 160 m | 2.93 s | ±0 m | 6 |
| 2,440 m | 320 kph | 134 kph · gear 3 | 84% | 160 m | 2.73 s | ±0 m | 6 |
| 3,300 m | 307 kph | 126 kph · gear 3 | 87% | 160 m | 3.06 s | ±0 m | 6 |
| 4,240 m | 320 kph | 144 kph · gear 3 | 84% | 160 m | 2.65 s | ±8 m | 6 |
When the widest spread reaches 10 m, the report's debrief says so, in these words:
Your brake point at the 500 m corner moves about 16 m lap to lap — the least repeatable braking of the lap, and the first place to look for the consistency above.
StintLab session report · debrief
Why it matters: you cannot move a brake point later with any confidence while it wanders by the width of a braking board. First make it repeatable — the same reference every lap, whether that is a board, a kerb, a shadow or a change in the tarmac — and watch the spread fall. Then move it, in small steps, and watch the minimum speed to see whether the change is paying.
A braking drill that uses the data
- Pick one corner. The one with the largest minimum Δ against a faster lap, or the widest brake-point spread in your own session.
- Replay it. Scrub or play the comparison through that braking zone and watch where the two laps' brake, speed and throttle traces separate.
- Change one thing. Same brake point, earlier release; or a firmer initial press; or a brake point one board later. Never three things at once — you will not know which one worked.
- Drive three clean laps. Clean matters: an invalidated lap is not evidence.
- Compare the exit, not the entry. The delta 100–200 m after the corner, and the speed on the next straight, are the verdict. StintLab's practice plan gives exactly this instruction: “Replay the braking and release here, then practice this section for three clean laps. Compare the exit speed before changing another section.”
For the whole method — baseline, three sections, drills, re-measure — see how to get faster in F1 25. For the lap-to-lap view, see consistency.
Braking assist, ABS and fair comparisons
F1 25's braking assist changes the braking itself, so StintLab records it with every lap from the game's session data and only ever matches laps with the same setting as targets for each other. The same goes for steering, gearbox, ERS and DRS assists and the racing line.
Two settings are not recorded in this edition: ABS and traction control. They live in a part of the telemetry StintLab reads only for fuel and tyres. If you compare a lap driven with ABS against one without, StintLab cannot warn you — keep them the same yourself. It matters most in exactly the numbers on this page: with ABS on, full pressure is safe and peak brake tells you little; without it, how you build and release pressure is half the skill.
Driving on a pad? The trigger changes what the brake trace looks like; the controller guide covers what to look for.
Questions
What exactly counts as the brake point?
The first sample of the lap, in that corner, where the brake is at 10% or more. The zone lasts until the pedal drops below 5%, and a zone whose pressure never reaches 15% is treated as a dab, not a braking point.
How precise is the brake point?
As precise as the samples around it. StintLab samples every 5 m of track by default, and at 300 km/h the game's send rate sets the real spacing: about 5.6 m at 30 or 60 Hz, about 8 m at 10 or 20 Hz. That is fine for comparing laps recorded the same way — a difference of one sample is not worth chasing.
Why is one corner split into two braking zones?
Because the pedal went below 5% and came back. Two separate applications — a stab, a lift, a second stab — are two zones in the data, because that is what your foot did. A lift that stays above 5% is one zone.
Does the table show trail braking?
The trace does. Trail braking shows as a brake trace that tapers towards the slowest point of the corner instead of stopping sharply before turn-in, and the table's zone length and time on the brake include that tail.
Does it know whether I use ABS or braking assist?
Braking assist is recorded with every lap from the game's session data, and laps are only matched against laps with the same setting. ABS and traction control are not recorded in this edition, so keep them the same yourself when you compare laps.
My brake trace goes straight to 100%. Is that wrong?
No. The trace is what the game reports for the pedal or trigger, from 0 to 100%. Plenty of drivers, especially with ABS on, brake at full pressure; the braking table then tells you more through the brake point, zone length and minimum speed than through the peak.