Now the owner of this CBR is a keen and enthusiastic track day goer, which in our book is a good thing. But (and we see this quite a lot) a lot of riders seem to be chasing their personal ‘ultimate’ lap time and often end up going slower by trying to go faster all the time, if you see our point…
So our customer here was trying hard, but found he couldn’t get his bike stopped. He was late braking on the way in to catch riders ahead, out braking himself and as a consequence was slow out. He’d actually fitted ‘race’ carbon pads – now these have to go through several heat cycles before they work at all, and need to come up to temperature every time out before they bite. So in reality the first two laps of each session he had no real brakes, and then he boiled his hydraulic fluid in a blind panic.
We started by replacing his master cylinder with a larger volume Brembo item that delivers more fluid (there is an argument that a smaller bore pipe and piston provide more pressure) because we know that the big Brembo master cylinders serve up the goods, every time, no messing. Track/road pads from SBS finished the job, (these have good initial bite) coupled with proper high-boiling point race fluid. Now our rider can get settled early, be confident with his braking points and get on!