Garage Heroes In Training Sep 5, 2025

GHiT 0723: Is It (Really) Worth It to Upgrade to Racing Brake Pads

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Captain's Log Supplemental

So, Miss Vicki. Yes, sir. Do you remember when we were watching those WRL events and some of those

grid life events where we used to see the in-car video and it had the cameras seeing front and back,

but it also could see all the telemetry and everything that was going on.

You know, most of the ones that we liked were taken by the Sentinel system. Remember,

James came on our podcast earlier? Right. You know, we have no excuse since he lent us one

for trial and demonstration purposes. We should actually probably put that in one of our cars,

maybe two. I really think we should. I think we should. I know. Because then we'd look like

the immature endurance racing team that we are. Oh, wait, I mispronounced that. I'm sorry.

So does the Sentinel system do? We could have three cameras with picture-in-picture. We could

have, if we ever get the AIM system to work, open invitation to anybody from AIM to come on

and give us a little bit of love. We need some help. And then we could have all our telemetry on

there and then we can have it streamed live into the paddock or around the world to our

millions of fans. We're apparently very popular in Kenya right now. Don't know why, but that's

fine. And it can integrate all the available race statistics from like race year and everything.

So we could actually see how we're doing on video. We wouldn't even have to carry

around our phone anymore. I love it.

From the great halls of their house, there are assembled three who hope to one day be

the world's greatest driving heroes. Created from the cosmic legends of the universe,

comes our team captain, the vision, Bill Fisher. They're soon to be Wonder Woman, Vicky Fisher,

our captain Marvel and head flight trainee, Jennifer Scribchuk, and our Batman, the master of tools,

gadgets and all things mechanical. Our mild mannered soon to be billionaire, Alan Danvers.

Their mission to fight injustice, share what is right and wrong to get you out of your house

and come out racing with them and serve all mankind. They are the garage heroes in training team.

Dominating with Dawson. Let's dominate. Ben Dawson, Ben Dawson, I need me some Ben Dawson.

Happy birthday, Bill. What's up? It is happy birthday and Miss Vicky's here.

Yeah. Hello. Hey. Before we get to our first Dominating with Dawson question,

has, have both of you been made aware that they're remaking Smoky and Madden?

I have not been made aware of that. I'm into it. Yeah, could be. I just want to know a car.

What car are they going to use? That's what I want to know.

Was it just announced or do they have a lineup yet? A few weeks ago.

I have not heard about that. That's awesome. I wonder if they go vintage.

Or if they go vintage retro look or if they go with some totally cool and bad assets.

I would let them see something bad ass and cool as modern. I don't know what it would be,

though. That's what I was trying to figure out. Supra. Something cool is shit like a Supra.

Who knows? I'm not saying it's got to be an American car. I mean, I guess,

Mustang would be cool. Who knows what kind of brands that kind of brand stuff would be tied

into it. I'm sure it'll be tied to a manufacturer, I'm sure.

We all know it's got to be who pays the biggest check.

But yeah, I could think of several modern cars that would be pretty cool for a Mustang.

Are they still making Camaros or are they about the face of Madden?

Nope. Camaros. Camaros are done again.

Yeah, so it's probably not going to be that.

Not going to be that. Not going to be a Firebird.

I would love it if this was the rebrand announcement for Firebird and Pontiac.

That would be fantastic.

Have you been Pontiac fan?

I am. I like Pontiacs. My first car was a Firebird.

Gosh, yeah.

That's pretty cool.

Thunderbird. But anyway, all right, Mr. Dawson.

All right, let's do, let's do something. I have so many to choose from now.

Let's see. I was going to do one on burnout, but since you never get to go to the track,

you can't get burnt out. So you're not going to be of any use whatsoever.

Wish you were. I mean, not that I wish I was out, but I wish I was good enough to go.

Yeah, I wish I was at any sort of risk of track burnout.

I probably didn't really get to go at all this year.

So this is my version of the track.

We may drag you kicking in the screen. We've got a plan coming so.

Okay. All right, Ben Dawson. We have a couple listeners.

One of them has his own podcast and he's on the left coast there.

And he has been fighting, kicking and screaming among other people that we talk to.

And the common refrain is why should I upgrade to racing pads when they're wear parts?

And what, what purpose is that they're just going to wear out anyway?

And they cost so much more.

Wow. You know, I've been in this, in this situation in my own dang self.

Not so much me. Like as soon as I started doing DEs

and understood that I could be a lot faster with, you know,

race pads that would give me the best bite and, you know,

reduce my stopping distance and be able to help me compress my brake zones.

I was immediately like, I'm going to go to the fastest grippiest at the time,

like carbotecs were huge where I was.

I don't know that they were that big.

They kind of evolved into G log pads.

But back in the day when I was doing, you know, even track days before racing,

I pretty much went straight to the best brake pads I could find.

Just because to me, yeah, they are a wear part.

So are tires. I also ran, you know, ran, ran R comps before I needed to ever,

you know, I used to run in our cops before I ever bought a set of 200 trouble with tires.

Well, I guess that's not exactly true.

I have some falcons first.

And I kind of went to run in R comps just for track days,

because I wanted to be on the same kind of tires that the racers are going to be.

I assumed that I was headed towards peck me out of.

So I would buy the same tires that they run, just so I'd be familiar with it

and run in the same kind of breaks.

They were, I mean, in my mind,

my track day car was eventually going to be a speck me out and I was always

heading that direction.

So I wanted everything to be pretty similar to what those guys were experiencing.

So I could kind of eventually join that field and sort of be on pace.

So that was my mindset was always like, I wanted to be running the race.

So I also, I also probably had a more racer as a view of everything about a car or a vehicle,

because I'd come from go car racing where every single thing on the go car is a wear item

from the chassis itself, you know, you wear it like everything was constantly being worn out

or replaced or in that kind of race and like circle track racing or including you.

Yeah, I kind of beat myself to death.

You know, so, yeah, so I came into the world of full size car

tracking and racing with the view that everything on the vehicle is a wear item.

And it's all you just want the best of everything that you can possibly afford

and to deal with.

So I don't get that exactly.

But I'll tell you this when I was over on the West Coast starting with most of the

Endurance Racing I started doing was with Ian Corf and his brother.

And they were in mind where they were like, yeah, similar kind of thought like,

you know, why put the best pads on here?

We're not that we're not that great at drivers all of this.

I mean, obviously Ben Dawson was there and I was right into the front.

Anytime they put me in the car.

But but everybody else they're kind of like, you know, we don't need to have the best

finest bright pads or that kind of thing because you know, we're not going to exploit

every bit of every bit of pace out of a mess or things.

That's sort of what you're hearing.

Oh, contrary.

It's a combination of I don't think they understand the difference in performance

as big as it is.

And I don't think they understand the duration of pad life to dollar.

Yeah.

Makes it not that big a difference.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're running like Durilas gold from your auto zone, you're going to burn

through those super fast.

You're going to burn through, you know, more sets of those more quickly

because you're just you're going to wear them out.

You're going to they're not designed for that kind of heat.

You may want to pad this design for the kind of heat

that you're going to be putting into them with track use.

So that's part of it.

You want to pad it's just going to fit the specs of what you're going to be

doing to them.

So that's going to be a higher level of heat.

And, you know, it's not just the heat that's the heat that gets soaked in

and the duration of the heat into the material.

You know, so this different pads are designed for different

different aspects of use.

And so the heat and the heat soak are a big part of it.

There's a lot of stuff about metallic and non-metallic compounds

that I don't understand, but that's that's part of it too.

There's a whole lot of wizardry that goes into breaks.

And typically use probably going to end up running what most people around you

recommend or say like, hey, this might be a good balance for a year kind of car

or something like that.

You know, just a quick general side note.

Generally, you want something grippier is your front compound,

a little bit less grippy compound in the rear,

unless you just happen to have a brake bias adjust your car.

You can do a little bit of brake biasing without you choose your pad compound.

So that's just one thing to think about.

A lot of people run the grippiest pad on the front.

And then something that's about two thirds or half is grippy on the back.

Just as a side note.

Yeah, you won't you won't race in pads because they're going to stop you a lot

quicker and they're going to be able to withstand a lot more heat.

And they're going to make you faster on track ultimately.

So I wouldn't want that.

I wouldn't want to be out there trying to do everything I'm doing well.

And then have to be on breaks that are crappy.

There's, you know,

only as you do like limo stops.

I want to stop.

I want to stop that car.

That race car like it's a race car.

So I am and I don't really want to hit the brake pad.

I mean, hit the brake pedal and not have

the brakes do what I want them to do.

Because if you're hitting the brake pedal, I want them to stop me.

I want that.

I want that car.

I want that car to hang me up in the belts and stand on the nose.

You know what I mean?

So I want to be, I want to be right here.

Yeah.

I mean, I want to do.

Have you ever had, have you ever had brakes that were too sticky?

Yeah.

And the version we had, we ran a pad, a pad compound that was too bitey.

He had too much bite for the tires that we had.

We ran a 200 strawberry tires.

We ran a pad that we all got used to.

But at first we were all locking the tires up.

We were running a car with no ABS.

We were running my old Miata.

And we put ST-43s all the way around it.

Raybestos ST-43s.

And we were running 200 strawberry tires.

And everybody just went out there.

I was like, brrr.

Like, it took us a while to learn how to dial it back.

Once we got used to the pad, it was, it was okay.

And we, you know, braided the use of that pad.

But we think we moved on to a different set of brakes for the, for the next time.

But yeah, you can, you can, you can overdo it with the grippy brakes on the car.

So you want to find the right, the right mixture.

And there are intermediate steps that you can take.

So one of the, one of the solutions that we use on the West Coast is they had all heard

that, have you ever heard of legendary lemons team Isor?

So Isor racing has a bunch of Mazda engineers and they race this Miata.

What I think they put a turbo on it.

But there's nothing, nothing that fancy is mostly just really good driving

and really well-drilled pit stops.

But they had on one of their website, their website,

they had about to build their car.

They said that they were using stop-tech 309s, which is kind of an intermediate sport pad,

more than an endurance racing pad.

Track day, right?

Yeah, more of a track day pad, but they were saying, hey, we were using these.

And so we used several sets of those on our car.

And for the most part, they were fine.

They didn't, they didn't overheat.

They weren't too bad.

They also just weren't the best brakes you could have.

But that was something that we used as an intermediate step.

And it kind of got us part of the way.

There's also things you could do where if you're tracking a car,

but maybe not doing full endurance sense, you might be able to get away with something

like a hawk HP plus pad that's still around.

I'm not even sure if that's still a thing.

But something that's an intermediate, more of a track rod across pad might get you

kind of part of the way there.

And, you know, those are even pads that people will run on the street some.

You hear people complain that the intermediate pads are noisy or dusty on the street.

But I mean, who really gives a shit if you're trying to run around,

if you're running around in your track, take car on the street.

You know, you could change, if you change your pads and rotors out,

going to and from the track, you are a super nerd.

If you're also, if you're driving around in your track, take car with your track day pads.

You're also some kind of super nerd.

It's also fancy.

I wouldn't sweat it even with it.

But you do want to, you do want to keep your rotors kind of embedded or

pregnant with one kind of compound.

You don't be switching back from your street brakes onto the same rotors

that you're running your track brakes on.

So that's something else to think about.

You can't just kind of swap pads back and forth.

You want to keep pads kind of purely mated to the brake lining or pad material that you use.

Does that make sense?

Well, it's not that you can't.

It's that you shouldn't.

You can do whatever the hell you want.

That's not a great idea.

Ms. Vicki, what did we miss?

Thanks.

Well, no, no, I get it.

My whole thing, one of my early learning things about the brake pads,

especially for beginners that are out there, was that when you're on the track

and they have you going through all these, through the program, and they tell you,

when you come off the track for new drivers, your immediate thought is to just

sit on the brakes.

Yeah.

Don't do that.

Nope.

Don't do that.

I learned a hard way early on, again, for new drivers and new track people.

If you do that, your brakes are so hot coming off the track that they will actually warp

the rotor.

Or weld to it.

So keep that in mind, too, when you're using your brake systems.

And that goes for any brake when you're tracking, in general.

And the other thing, too, to notice that when you're actually working on your car with your

brakes and your rotors, is that you can actually start to tell,

know that they've now learned along the way.

So you can tell when your rotors are starting to fail,

when you start seeing fine line cracks in them.

Yeah.

So you see your rotors that kind of get hardcore worn out,

but then there's also, look for the fine line cracks.

And that means it's time to change those out and switch over to something better.

That's a good point.

You ready for the number one tip in brake pads?

What's that?

Yes.

The number one tip is to call up Wendy at Porter Fields.

Yeah, she's good.

She's really good.

And say, I have this car, and I'm using it for this kind of racing.

What do you think I should get?

You know, I've done that.

And I've also done this other tip that not everybody knows.

I've said, this is at the time we were running a champ car, jump car.

I was like, hey, this is for our jump car team.

You got any kind of racer discount?

And she goes, yeah, 15% off.

So that's another benefit of calling right up.

You might just say, hey, this is for a competition team and we're doing this

and we'd be happy to.

I said, hey, you sent us the first stickers in the box.

I'd be happy to put them on there.

She's like, don't even worry about it.

Here's your 15% off.

So that's something that's worth talking about.

Because I had been calling.

I had been getting them from some dude in California paying a full sticker price

plus his markup and all this stuff.

And then I needed some advice from the factory.

So I called and she's like, oh, you can just order them right now.

And I did.

And I got a discount.

So that was what immediately turned me on to making the call and talking to Wendy.

And if you care about brake pads and brakes and rotors and everything about that,

we had Wendy on the wolf, man.

Oh, it was a while ago.

It was early on.

A hundred episodes, 600 episodes ago.

It was a bit less linked.

Let's link that baby in the show because I haven't even heard that one.

I'd like to check it out.

That's a good one.

I think she came on and I've tried to get her back on.

She's like, but we covered everything.

And I'm like, but Wendy, we just like to talk.

Don't you know that bit?

But she's, she was pretty spectacular.

And we hope she'll come back on.

But yeah, that's cool.

We'll see.

She's, she knows her stuff.

She's been there a while.

And it was, you ready for this?

Episode 59.

Wow.

I knew it was way back.

I was way, way back.

So she covers brakes and rotors.

Everything for racing and why you want certain things

and why you don't want certain things.

Which is more important, like drilled rotors.

No.

No, slotted.

Nah, probably not.

Slotted.

She was a favor of.

She's like, slotted can work.

You don't need it like you used to.

But drilled is a no-go, except for.

You talked about those cheese rotors.

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I don't know if we've fully answered the question

and query you've been getting from your friends who are

not fully on board with the necessity of buying race pads.

But I think it's, I think it's worth doing if you're,

if you're trying to kind of up your game on track

and trying to ultimately be somebody who's going to be a racer,

go ahead and start driving and equipping yourself

the way the racers do is what I did.

And it helped me become a better driver

in a faster, shorter amount of time.

Something else to think about too is,

is for most of us and most of the stuff we drive,

rotors themselves are relatively cheap.

I mean, I think I could get me out of rotors

for like E30 rotors back in the day

for like 13 bucks a piece or something like that.

So keep yourself a set of rotors

and that goes with your track pads

if you're going to be swapping them in and out.

But also just don't worry about,

don't worry about your rotors.

And like Vicki said,

if you see little hairline cracks start popping up,

go ahead and get new ones.

It's not worth waiting around

and potentially having a brake pad explode on your ride.

Just having some kind of failure with the brakes

because a failure with the brakes will lead to

potentially a failure with your whole car or your health.

Yeah, for sure.

And you are borderline breaking the first rule of racing.

Don't skimp on safety.

Oh, are brakes not just a wear item

but a safety item though?

I believe they are.

I mean, you know, they do both.

But yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway, hopefully that helps some of our friends out there

and especially one particular West Coast guy

who keeps hiding his head in the sand.

But I can get no.

Go get the good ones, buddy.

Anyway.

Yeah, let's do it too.

That's right.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Great topic.

Thanks for having me on that one.

No worries.

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About this episode

The hosts dive into the debate on whether upgrading to racing brake pads is worth the cost and effort. They share personal experiences from track days and endurance racing, explaining how race pads improve stopping power, heat resistance, and overall performance. The discussion covers pad compounds, brake bias, rotor care, and the importance of matching pads to driving style. They also highlight expert advice from industry insiders and stress that brakes are not just wear items but crucial safety components. Tips on selecting the right pads and maintaining your braking system round out the conversation.

BMW 3 Series Chevrolet Camaro Ford Mustang Mazda MX-5 / Miata Pontiac Firebird Toyota Supra

Original notes

GHiT 0723: Is It (Really) Worth It to Upgrade to Racing Brake Pads

With Ben back, we go over a discussion we have had with many listeners about is it really needed or worth it to upgrade to racing brake pads for a race or even a track day. So we did.

Did we miss something? Please let us know at [email protected]

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/RacingBrakes

We hope you enjoy this episode!

If you would like to help grow our podcast and high-performance driving and racing:

You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast app, Google music, Amazon, YouTube, etc.

Also, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating, that we would appreciate very much. Even better, a podcast review would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving and we would appreciate it.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Ben, Alan, Jeremy, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes in Training Podcast and Garage Heroes in Training racing team drivers

We hope you enjoy this episode!

If you would like to help grow our podcast and high-performance driving and racing:

You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast app, Google music, Amazon, YouTube, etc.

Money saving tips:

1) Enter code "GHIT" for a 10% discount code to all our listeners during the checkout process at https://candelaria-racing.com/ for a Sentinel system to capture and broadcast live video and telemetry.

2) Enter the code "ghitlikesapex!" when you order and Apex Pro system from https://apextrackcoach.com/ and you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.

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