The drag racing marketplace is full of hardcore braking systems that handle the chore of slowing a speeding race car to a stop dutifully, but when you reach into the tippy-top of the sport, it takes a lot more than your average disc brake setup to do the job. For that reason — and of course for the unparalleled weight savings — race teams in Top Fuel, Funny Car, the Top Alcohol categories, and even some lower-tier classes utilize carbon fiber brakes to bring their 200-300 MPH machines to a safe stop.
This technology of course doesn’t come cheap, and but then again, there’s nothing at all cheap about the upper echelons of drag racing.
Hawk Performance, one of the industry’s leading manufacturers of high performance brake pads, is one top suppliers of carbon brake pads for the drag racing market. Their lightweight pads and rotors are delivered to Strange Engineering, which uses them in their line of high-end carbon fiber drag racing brakes.
These carbon pieces have impeccable strength, with a structure that is impossible to crack, as Hawk’s Mathew Roskey explains. In addition, the weight difference is unbelievable when holding the carbon pad in one hand and a more common ceramic pad in the other.
The hotter these discs get, the harder they lock up. – Mathew Roskey
Hawk Performance also manufacturers carbon fiber clutch discs that are ultra light and strong, thanks to the way the fibers are laid in the structure of the rotor. “The hotter these discs get, the harder they lock up,” says Roskey. “Discs like this are perfect for taking something like your 700 HP Corvette to the track and letting it rip.”
For more information on Hawk Performance and their line of brake pads and rotors for everything from your street car to your race car, log on to hawkperformance.com.
You might also like
Accuracy Matters: Why Digital Tire Pressure Gauges Are a Drag Racer’s Best Friend
Accuracy is very important when it comes to tire pressure in drag racing. Here's why a digital tire pressure gauge provides the best reading.
