Brakes slow a car down in terms of velocity over time. But they may make a car faster in the sense of distance over time (aka lap times).

I guess the real issue here is that 'fast' is ambiguous. In terms of racing it can be used for both lap-times or velocity. lap-times and maximum velocity are not necessarily correlated.

</nerdsnipe>

You could say that brakes make the car faster in race conditions.

Daaaaaaaymn. Good one, holds up!

They often are correlated though. Better brakes mean you can stay on the accelerator longer before braking, which means you usually have higher maximum velocity and faster lap times (faster lap times are literally higher average velocities, so this makes sense).