for rapier and phantom there are no hard and fast rules about when to brake, imo, it depends entirely on the ship and your racing style. But I think you should avoid hitting walls at all costs: as far as I know there aren`t any places where its faster to hit the wall than to miss it, (apart from this being a very ugly thing to do), and also every wall-bang takes away a big chunk of very valuable boost-juice. So with this in mind its probably better to be a bit over-cautious if anything at first, learn how to fly a perfect lap, at least in theory, get the feel of the corners and when you`re in control all the way round you can identify places where you can go faster and just as safely without braking. Maybe I`m too cautious, but once you get to the fast rapier ships I`d say start slower and build up speed rather than go off like a maniac and never learn anything. Also experiment with pitch control, it makes an enormous difference and cuts down on the places where you`ll need to brake. Hi Fumii is a great one to practice all kinds of nose up/nose down moves, I think. I need to practice that one more myself though.... ops:

As far as the other ships go, after you overtake them on rapier and phantom the important thing is to be clean through the next few corners so they don`t even get a chance to blast your tailpipe and play wall-pong with your helpless wallowing icaras. Brake if you want to, but don`t hit a wall. On some long straights its worth using some boost to get away, or saving a shield or cloak for it if you know its coming.

welcome to wipeout, by the way.

and if you see a copy of wipeout 3 SE, you must buy it: you get an extra eight tracks plus more prototypes. Its the mother of all wipeouts.