Sepang by the brake numbers: MotoGP's hardest stop
Brembo's data for this weekend's Malaysian GP: 11 braking zones, 35 seconds on the brakes per lap and a final-corner stop from 320 to 64 km/h.
3 min readSepangMalaysiaBy PitPin Desk
MotoGP is at the Petronas Sepang International Circuit this weekend for Round 19, with Marc Marquez leading Jorge Martin by 10 points. Brembo has published its braking figures for the track. Those figures are for a MotoGP prototype, a long way from your own bike.
The lap in numbers
Brembo's engineers rate the 5.543 km circuit 5 on a scale of 1 to 6 for brake demand. Only Motegi, Buriram and Spielberg are rated harder.
- Riders are on the brakes for 35 seconds per lap.
- There are 11 braking zones. Brembo classes 4 of them as High, one as Medium and 6 as Low.
- Brembo expects most riders to choose 340 mm or 355 mm carbon discs.
The final corner
The last corner before the finish line is the hardest stop on the lap. The bikes come down from 320 km/h to 64 km/h, which Brembo says is the second-biggest speed drop of the season. It takes 5.5 seconds and 259 metres. The rider puts 5.5 kg on the lever. Deceleration is 1.5 g, fluid pressure peaks at 11.7 bar, and the discs reach 620 °C.
On a track day
Your speeds and forces are lower, but the shape of a lap is similar on most circuits.
Most of the stops are small: six of Sepang's 11 zones are Low. If you treat every corner as a big stop, you lose time in the places where a short squeeze, or simply rolling off, would do the job.
Big stops take a long time. The last corner holds you on the brakes for 5.5 seconds. Into a slow hairpin at the end of a long straight, the work is spread across the whole zone, and how you release the lever as you turn in matters as much as the first squeeze.
In that one stop the MotoGP discs reach 620 °C. Your road-bike brakes will not see that, but they still heat up over a session with several big stops. Use the cool-down lap, and if the lever starts to feel different during a session, come in and get it checked.
Brembo explains that a bigger disc gives more braking force and sheds heat better, but the extra weight hurts acceleration and changes of direction. Teams choose disc diameter track by track because of that weight, so the biggest brake package is not automatically the best one.
The Malaysian GP runs through Sunday. When you watch the onboards, keep an eye on that last corner, where the riders are braking for more than five seconds.