Physics of Braking

We all know how brake systems work in a vehicle. However, today, I am going to try to connect physics to braking in a way that I'm not actually sure is correct or will make any sense at all but here goes nothing. Alrighty everyone, consider the following. What if I told you that when you use the brake in your car, you are actually creating an applied force. Think of all the forces at work when driving, there's the force of gravity, the force of friction from the tires and the road, the applied force from the brakes, and the normal force of the vehicle. The applied force of the brakes has to be the strongest one in order to slow the car down and bring it to a complete stop. Once again, I'm not actually sure if this is correct, I thought about this in the shower for whatever reason and decided to write it here without even performing a simple Google search to see if it was even remotely correct, but hey, I think I know what I'm doing here, I have like a 72 in the class so I'm Gucci.