RobinSherwood

I am not into the science of all this but to give you an idea from a racing perspective as you suggested, we 'life' the brakes (discs and pads) on the race car ie we do not wait until they are worn out we replace them after a set time as we don't want to experience a failure or substantial loss of performance. Never the less at some circuits after replacing the pads we see a laptime gain of up to a second. This is replacing the pads (Performance Friction) like for like and long before you would would consider replacing the pads on a road car.

The key difference is the brakes are being pushed MUCH harder in a racing situation than they are on the road.

From a Subaru road car perspective I would not hesitate to upgrade my STi from the standard Brembo setup to an AP one if I could justify it. In the opinion of 'my' racing driver there would be a substantial gain in laptime on a circuit or handling course as a result.

HTH

Robin

trails

iTrader: (41)

fade can be loosely defined as a reduction in friction due to temperature build up. hth

BlueBugEye

iTrader: (12)

I ran my 4 pot Subaru fronts on OE disks with DS2500 Pads, they were good but under hard braking on spirited driving I still experienced the dreaded fade (even over shooting a corner that I had successfully braked for from the same entry speed earlier with cooler brakes).
I then switched to Grooved (OE) disks with redstuff pads, big mistake, they did work OK cold and on really hard driving they were better than the OE + DS2500 combination however they were shocking at 'fast road' temps.
Now I have AP 4pots on the car with Godspeed disks (330mm) and DS2500s and there is no fade discernible at all. OK I haven't tracked it as yet but I have got close to track temps. The brake feel is far better and the brake release is lovely with no drag or catching.