Jonquirk wrote:As I understand it three phases of braking are the initial ramping up of pressure on the pedal followed by sustained pressure to achieve the desired retardation leading to feathering off the pedal pressure as the car reaches the desired speed so that there is no jerk as the pedal is released.
Smooth braking starts with throttle, and it all has to do with observation leading the use of the controls. You need to:
Seperate acceleration and deceleration by a phase of maintainence throttle at a constant speed.
Start to ease off the throttle progressively.
Than it's a matter of starting to apply the brakes at a progressive (but still quite quick) rate.
Now, I don't like terms like "three point braking" in as much as relating the same to acceleration, or "hinting" at the steering. I think they might come across as something of a small step input, pause and than a big step input.
In that fashion (knowing still that whoever coined these terms didn't mean for them to be portrayed as such), they are an attempt to introduce some smoothness to the otherwise unsmooth drivers, whether their being unsmooth is habitual or intentional.
Proper smoothness, to me, relies on starting to brake up to the desired level of deceleration, holding it there for the required period of time and than starting to breath off of it.
In many regards, starting (are you starting to see a pattern there? ) to back off of the controls smoothly is much more important than applying them in that fashion.
Now, neither of these needs to be particularly slow. It's all about the rate of acceleration and deceleration of the controls as you start (and finish) to brake, accelerate or turn.
I also like the metaphors that Ed Dellis uses in terms of "floating" up to the limit (the limit of desired performance rather than the limit of absolute performance), or mimicing an egg-toss.