Why do race cars have brakes?

In a recent presentation on Enterprise Risk Management, Cisco's Chris Kite began with a slide that noted "They don't put brakes on race cars to make them go slower; they put brakes on race cars so they can go faster!" Nice pitch on Risk Management as a means of letting a businesses take more risk, not less risk. You make more money doing things that others view as risky.

Taking risk doesn't necessarily guarantee incentives but improves the magnitude of incentives in some cases. End of the day, how thrilling is life with zero risk!