Searching for Simple Performance Gains? Up Your Brake Horsepower

By Arison Knapp - October 10, 2016

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If you’ve been factoring out how you can achieve the biggest performance gains with the smallest amount of time, tuning, and money, then installing better brake pads may be your best bet. Before you venture into learning about brake pad designs, materials, and testing reviews, you’ll need to identify what type of driving-style, car, and terrain you’re tuning for. Matching product to lifestyle is still an end-user decision that mystifies a lot of drivers. Hopefully, with knowledgable videos like the one below from Engineering Explained — along with some good ‘ol trial-and-error — over time, you’ll find a sweet spot for braking componentry.

If you know about disc braking this is great continuing education. There are mighty differences, of course, and our host, Professor Fenske, shares with us a slice of wisdom about how better-performing brake pads are designed and work. Simply put: performance pads are built to withstand heavier loads, accept higher temps, and dissipate heat faster — all while continuing to deliver consistent braking.

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Fenske explains that traditional pads built to work for the everyday driver are designed to operate great at cold temps, but they have diminished returns as you brake harder and heat them up. That’s how the performance pad crushes the competition: by keeping its cool at the limits of driving.

Braking isn’t too fascinating in the States, although overseas car critics measure a vehicle’s driving abilities by the force needed to brake all that firepower to the wheels. This is referred to as the brake horsepower (bhp). Most often, sports car brakes must have excess power delivered for safe operation. Most of the mass-produced cars today won’t have that listed, but you can get that same sports car power-to-braking ratio in your BMW by just adding performance brake pads.