Mr. David Clegg, Alcon Components Limited, UNITED KINGDOM

Mr. Garry Wiseman, Alcon Components Limited, UNITED KINGDOM

Dr. Andrew Smith, Alcon Components Limited, UNITED KINGDOM

The field of Motorsport covers a wide range of applications from Formula 1 to World Rally (WRC) and NASCAR to GT. This range of race series and the varying regulations applied to each drives a variety of different requirements on the brake systems used.

Motorsport is primarily about winning. In order to win at the highest levels of Motorsport, then very small margins matter. This means that huge attention is paid to brake system performance and consistency to ensure driver confidence, thermal management to ensure the best balance of vehicle drag, brake cooling and disc weight and an overall obsession with weight where 100g is a worthwhile improvement. Unlike Performance Road Cars, noise is not an issue.

This presentation will provide an overview of the typical duty cycles experienced in track and off-road racing, so that the requirements of the brakes can be put into context. Further, the current state of art for the brake components will be discussed sharing their key features. Motorsport calipers use topology optimisation to minimise weight for a target stiffness. But they also include cooling ducts, thermal barriers for pistons and intricate fluid passageways. Brake rotor assemblies are fully floating on bells, using a number of technologies as interface systems between the disc and bell. Rotors also have significant attention paid to their cooling with vent design looking to optimise heat rejection.

Brake actuation in Motorsport differs greatly from Road vehicles. Whilst some series allow some electronic intervention, be that ABS or brake bias blending to work with Regenerative braking, as per Formula E, most series still run with a system of single master cylinders on an adjustable balance bar such that the driver can adjust front to rear bias to suit the speed and downforce levels at any part of a circuit. This presentation will share examples of these actuation technologies to give an overview of the current state of art components. As with the foundation brakes, lightweight components are critical to success and so the optimisation technologies used in calipers are also applied to the structural components of the pedal box housing the actuation.

In summary this presentation aims to give a broad overview of the requirements of Motorsport brakes, the latest brake system products and key design methodologies.