Understanding Formula One: Brakes

Welcome one and all to the second edition of “Understanding Formula One,” where I am looking to teach you in the fundamental rules and technologies that make up modern Formula One.

Here in this edition, I will look at brakes, which was also heavily discussed in the comments section of the Aerodynamics edition of this series.

A Formula One car is actually closely related to its road-going counterpart when it comes to the art of braking.

Now that ABS anti-skid systems have been banned from Formula One, most modern road cars can lay claim to having considerably cleverer retardation. That sounds slightly embarrassing really, but less aids means better racing...doesn’t it?

The principle of braking is simple, slowing the object by removing kinetic energy from it. Formula One cars have disc brakes, like the vast majority of road cars, with rotating discs, attached to the wheels, being squeezed between two brake pads by the action of a hydraulic calliper.

This turns a car's momentum into large amounts of heat and light, eagle eyed fans will have noticed the way Formula One brake discs glow yellow hot. Looks cool, doesn’t it?

In the exact same way that applying too much power through a wheel will cause it to spin, too much braking will cause it to lock as the brakes surpass the available levels of grip from the tyre.

Formula One did previously allow anti-skid braking systems, which would reduce the brake pressure to allow the wheel to turn again and then continue to slow it at the maximum possible rate, but these were banned in the early 1990s.

Braking, to this very day, still remains one of the sternest tests of a Formula One driver's skill.

It really sorts out the men from the boys, although Lewis Hamilton does appear to have an obsession with locking his brakes, whereas I do not think Jenson Button has locked a brake all season long...weird, eh?

The technical regulations also require that every single car has a twin-circuit hydraulic braking system with two separate reservoirs for the front and rear wheels.

This ensures that, even in the event of one complete circuit failure, braking should still be available through the second circuit. Brake failures were at one point commonplace until this sophisticated system came into play.

The amount of braking energy going to the front and rear circuits and where it is distributed can be 'biased' by a dial in the cockpit, either on the steering wheel or on the floor of the car, down to the left or right of a driver.

This allows a driver to stabilise handling or constantly change the brakes bias for every corner, much like we have seen Jenson Button do this season.

Under normal operation, about 60 percent of braking power goes to the front wheels because of the load transfer under deceleration. The other 40 percent goes to the rear of the car to stabilise the car under braking.

There is one area Formula One brakes are significantly more advanced than their road-going equivalent systems: materials.

All the cars on the grid now use carbon fibre composite brake discs which save good amounts of weight and are able to operate at higher temperatures than steel discs. A typical Formula One brake disc weighs about 1.5 kg.

These are gripped by special compound brake pads and are capable of running at simply astronomical temperatures...anything up to 750 degrees Celsius, or as I like to call it, hotter than Scarlett Johansson. Jenson Button came up with that one, not me.

In past years, different-sized discs would be used for qualifying and racing, but when the rules were changed in 2003, it meant that all cars enter parc-ferme after qualifying, and so therefore set their ultimate qualifying lap times on their race brakes.

Formula One brakes are phenomenally efficient. In combination with the modern advanced tyre compounds, they have dramatically reduced braking distances.

It takes a Formula One car substantially less distance to stop from 160 km/h than a road car uses to stop from 100 km/h.

The brakes are so bloody good that the regulations deliberately discourage development through restrictions on materials and design, to prevent even shorter braking distances rendering overtaking all but impossible, overtaking is impossible enough at it is, imagine what damage perfect brakes would do to the action in a race.

For the 2009 season, teams were allowed to develop a energy recovery system, known as the Kinetic Energy Recovery System, also known as KERS.

KERS allow the teams to recover the kinetic energy that is dispersed under braking for each corner and store it as a boost of 80 horsepower for 6.7 seconds per lap.

KERS has been a white elephant this season, with the system costing a gigantic amount of money to develop and a large amount to maintain and run. Some teams are believed to have spent over £50 million on developing their KERS systems.

The only successful KERS system has been the one run by McLaren-Mercedes. The system has not seen a failure and appears to harness the 80bhp a lot better than any other system seen this season.

We have seen the potential of KERS this season on two occasions, the first was the Bahrain Grand Prix, where Lewis Hamilton dived up the order and was challenging for the lead one lap one before falling back slightly.

The second occasion was the German Grand Prix, where Hamilton started in fifth place. He dived through the grid to find himself ahead of polesitter Mark Webber and leading into turn one before succumbing to a puncture picked up by hitting Webber.

Thank you all for reading this guide to braking, join me next time for my next guide to understanding Formula One.

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