The 2024 season began as the previous one ended, that is, once again, with Max Verstappen and his Red Bull in front of everyone. On the other hand, no one expected anything different given the important advantage with which the world champion team had closed the 2023 season. The Milton Keynes team scored three doubles in four races, with Australia as the only truly negative event due to the retirement of Max Verstappen and a lacklustre performance from Checo Perez.
As in previous seasons, graining limited Red Bull and, at the same time, enhanced the performance of a Ferrari SF-24, which must be acknowledged for the important, and not obvious, step forward compared to last year, especially in terms of Sunday race pace.
RED BULL SWITCHED TO BREMBO CARBON AFTER EXCELLENT FEEDBACK FROM VERSTAPPEN
The Ferrari SF-24 is the only car that tried to keep up with a Red Bull RB20, which in some respects was revolutionized; in cooling, for example, but also in a macro component that is always talked about too little, namely the braking system, with the saying, revised for the occasion, “you can’t change a winning car” which does not apply to Adrian Newey.
During the pre-season tests, in fact, Red Bull had tested the Brembo brake discs with the aim of keeping them in the car for the entire season. So it happened given that the very positive feedback from Max Verstappen thus convinced the Anglo management Austrian to make the very important step. Thanks to an exclusive interview with Brembo’s Car Racing Market Manager, Andrea Algeri, we tried to understand what drives such an important team, which has experienced two practically perfect and dominant seasons, to change disc suppliers.
“Our carbon has advantages over that produced by other suppliers because it is more consistent.
“That is, it has a very low consumption per kilometre, and the teams really appreciate this characteristic because they are able to use it for longer,” the engineer of the Italian giant announced.
In the Budget Cap regime, it is an even more important feature. Still, the economic one is not the only advantage, given that the Brembo carbon also guarantees greater consistency of performance over the duration, therefore from one weekend to the next.
“Those who use it often tell us that the pedal stretches much less than material from other suppliers and that it has the ability to be very ready when cold .” Algiers also stated. This means that performance increases in those situations where the brakes are cold, such as out laps, the first corners of a GP or restarts behind the Safety Car.
It is very clear if you look at Mercedes, which uses material produced by another supplier when during last but also the previous year, in particular conditions, both Hamilton and Russell had complained of not having the brakes ready in all those reduced warm-up phases.
TO MAKE THE PILOT TEST THE NEW MATERIAL, DISCS FROM OTHER SUPPLIERS ARE ‘COPIED’
Further advantages that often make people lean towards Brembo are the customization that the Italian and Bergamo giants grant to their customers.
“We are also good at providing our customers with plug-and-play solutions, meaning we try to customize them.
“Our technical department, in fact, always tries to advise the teams, not only on the material but also on the architecture to use in terms of cooling and more,” Algiers stated.
The first stage of a switch from another supplier is to equip the particular car with a disc very similar to that produced by other suppliers so that the driver can test the characteristics of the new material.
“In those cases, we study prototypes, thanks to the information that is shared on the FIA server, which perhaps has a limited life in terms of kilometres rather than wear.
“It’s a companion that can be made easily, without major investments and that gives you the opportunity to let the rider taste the first bite of the new material,” Algiers said.
Even with Formula 1 set on a growing increase in the number of races on the calendar, even if next season there will remain 24 like the current one, for Brembo, the greatest pressure is more linked to the budget cap.
“Our customers often ask us to reduce costs, and for this reason, we have worked hard in recent months to extend the life of the components and also their overhaul intervals.
“This means that, as the races increase, the teams are left with more or less the same number of components they ordered previously,” Brembo’s Car Racing Market Manager.
“The research that has been done in this direction on carbon has paid and is paying because, in any case, the number of races increases. But in the end the sets for each team are not increased a lot. And indeed, after the first few years, some people order less and less because the teams are increasingly optimizing purchases.”
It can, therefore, be understood that Brembo’s most important limit is not so much the number of races but the logistics at the beginning of the season when all production must also fit in with the other series that Brembo Racing follows globally. Always remembering that the projections of raw materials go beyond the year, therefore for the Italian giant, regulatory stability is more important than the number of tenders itself.
