Skip Navigation

Select Language

Instant success

What RaceTech Magazine writes about Ferodo's DS3.12 Racing pads

"As well as the bite and performance of a world class racing brake pad, an incredibly flat torque curve and linear response to pressure, mean that DS3.12 also gives a superior level of control.
Congratulations to Audi Sport Italia, BMW Team Italia and Imperial Racing for the prodium finishes at round one of the Italian GT3 Endurance championship all using Ferodo Racing brake pads!

Ferodo Racing's new brake pad compound has now been tested in the heat of battle - and passed with flying colours, as William Kimberley explains.

For the past three years, Ferodo Racing has been developing DS3. l 2, a high output, heavy duty circuit compound that has been created for top-level GT racing. 
Its main characteristics are the highest friction coefficient and bite in the Ferodo Racing range and reproducible and stable performance up to 850°C under all pressure and speed conditions. In independent tests, the new compound shows the flattest torque curve across the broadest temperature range.

Test results are one thing, but the ultimate test comes when the cars hit the racetrack.
So there was understandable excitement among those involved on this pioneering project when the 2020 motorsport season finally restarted.

The revised calendar provided some of the most extreme environments encountered by brakes - the Monza 12 Hours and lmola 3 Hours - plus a different environment altogether in the shape of the three-hour endurance race at Mugello, the season-opener of the Italian GT Championship.

The battle for victory at Mugello, where all three teams on the podium used Ferodo pads, was a sensational one.

The Team Audi Sport Italia R8 LMS dominated two of the three practice sessions, captured the pole position in qualifying and fought with its rival in the race for thousandths of a second. It initially fell behind a BMW but, after 21 laps, regained the lead when passing backmarkers and entered the first pit stop with a nine-second lead.

It was able to maintain the advantage of eight seconds until the second stop. In the last six laps of the race, the Audi fought for every metre with the second-placed BMW. Despite slightly impaired aerodynamics due to body parts damaged in the fight, it won by exactly 26 thousandths of a second after 498 race kilo metres.

file
Ferodo's DS3.12 proved an immediate hit!
 
 

"The success rate has been outstanding and the number of cars using our new brake compound is increasing rapidly", says Sergio Bonfanti who heads up Ferodo Racing. "It's been really fantastic. At the recent 12 hours of Monza, one of our teams completed the race without a change of brake pads. The other great test was the 3-hour race at Imola, where the operating temperature at 500°C was very high."

The instant success of Ferodo's brake pad compound has caught the attention of other manufacturers.
"The data analytics and telemetry show very clearly that on medium and low energy stops the efficiency is rising big time", reports Bonfanti. "We have more than 10% improvement under medium energy braking, and a 15%-17% improvement in low energy stops, so the modulation is really great: the drivers don't lose speed. This is of specific use to the professional driver, who is able to squeeze 100% out of the car."

Sintered Metal


Bonfanti's engineering team, led by Ed Little, Ferodo Racing's technical manager, has confirmed that the company is now looking at different styles of formulation, for example, sintered metal formulations.

"We have quite an advanced technical capacity to make sintered metal brake parts for motorcycles", he says (Sintered pads are pressed metal powders which are bound by the metals being fused together at extremely high temperatures during manufacture rather than using a resin).

"These are traditionally used in motorcycles", notes Little, "but we are now developing them for racing cars. This gives us the chance to do something different in those sectors of motorsport where this technology can be used - mainly rallies."