This has become a very hot topic for me. It’s not about some little issue that annoys me, this is about a major safety flaw in the brakes of cars that are designed and engineered to reach speeds of 200mph. When it comes to safety, brakes are the single most important feature of your car.
Brake failure at any speed can be catastrophic.
They need to be reliable. So I was very concerned when I discovered a major design flaw in a carbon ceramic brake system that exists across a wide range of supercars. Brake pads and rotors work together to stop your car. The caliper squeezes the pads together against the rotor, creating stopping power through friction. This all works continuously well as long as all the contacting surfaces are both hard and consistent.
The issue with some of these carbon ceramic brake systems, however, is that all the contacting surfaces are not consistent. The pads in these systems contact the entire width of the rotor however the entire width of the rotor is not made from the same hard material, it is not consistent. There is an inner ring that is carbon fiber, which is softer than the rest of the carbon ceramic components. The result is that over time, the pad wears down inconsistently. The portion of the pad contacting the hard outer carbon ceramic ring wears down at a much faster rate than the portion over the soft inner carbon fiber ring.
This causes improper wear and heat distribution which can result in a variety of issues. The pads can crack, or bind and warp, or wear into the inner carbon fiber ring which can cause the rotor to become unbalanced, damaged or even destroyed. Any one of these situations can be disastrous. Wheel lock up, inhibited stopping power or total brake failure are all realistic outcomes if left unremedied.
Several years ago I reached out to Ferrari to see if they were aware of the problem and had an updated part that corrected this issue. They responded letting me know I’m using the correct pads and there is no issue with them. Interestingly, though, I was looking at a new Ferrari SF90 the other day and saw something different when I checked out the brakes. They had the same rotors with the inner carbon fiber ring, however they had a redesigned brake pad with a groove cut out where it would normally overlap that section. So despite their claim that it was not an issue, Ferrari decided to redesign their brake pads to account for this overlap. It would seem that this will be the new pad design moving forward.
While it’s great to see they’ve finally corrected this issue for new cars, they unfortunately have not corrected this issue for any of their older cars. It is, and will continue to be, a major flaw for thousands of cars still on the road. I’ve seen this flaw on Ferrari’s, McLarens, Aston Martins, and other carbon ceramic Brembo brake systems. I have sent messages to Brembo to try and speak with someone about the issue, but my attempts thus far have been unsuccessful. It seems they would rather wait for people to start dying from the problem before addressing it.
If your car has this flaw, make sure to keep a close eye on it.
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Pen Pendleton