BAKU, Azerbaijan — It is called a safety car because it is put on the track to reduce the speed of the single seaters guaranteeing the safety of the service personnel who have to remove cars involved in accidents as well as the safety of the drivers. Even so, five years ago, Romain Grosjean collided with a wall under the Safety Car in the Azerbaijan GP while trying to stop his tires from cooling down.
His Brembo brakes could not save him even if, after the 20 corners of the city circuit, they had remained within the temperature range recommended for ideal use. What is more, the Baku City Circuit is classified as a very demanding circuit on the brakes: on a scale of 1 to 5, it is rated 4 on the difficulty index.
The mobility of the future
Over the last three decades, Azerbaijan has demonstrated remarkable growth due to its petrol and gas exports. However, the country is well aware that this model must change. Brembo has also been looking very carefully at the mobility of the future for several years as shown by the first Hackathon organized by Brembo to rethink the world of mobility and find new solutions that look beyond traditional processes of innovation.
The way we move, communicate and travel will continue to evolve and will make the mobility of the future increasingly more digital and connected as well as greener. Vehicles will be more and more sustainable and interconnected, that is to say, they will interface with other IoT devices, the home, and communication systems.
Constantly using the brakes from 1 to 8
The 12 braking moments on the Baku City Circuit are a lot but are not the world record which is held by Singapore. However, the Azerbaijan track is the only one in F1 where the drivers have to use their brakes on all of the first eight corners after the starting line. All four of the first turns are also 90-degree ones and are therefore very demanding on the brakes.
With four braking moments that each last for more than two seconds, the brakes are used for just over 19 seconds on a whole lap. From the starting line to the checkered flag, each driver exerts a total load of almost 78 metric tons on the brake pedal, the highest of the first five Grand Prix of the season: the figure per lap is impressive, approximately 1.525 kg (1.68 ton) per driver.
4.8 Gs of deceleration
Of the 12 braking sections at the Azerbaijan GP, five are classified as highly demanding on the brakes, four are of medium difficulty and the remaining three are light.
The most demanding one for the braking system is turn 3 even if the drivers come onto it at a lower speed than the first braking section.
On turn 3, the single-seaters reduce their speed by a massive 210 km/h (130 mph), dropping from 315 km/h (195 mph) to 105 km/h (65 mph). To do this, the drivers are exposed to 4.8 Gs of deceleration for 2.18 seconds during which time the cars cover a distance of 106 meters (347 feet).
