Brake pedal pressure in F1 cars

POWERRR!!

POWERRR!!

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Martin Brundle has described many times that it takes upwards to 85kgs of brake pedal pressure to slow an F1 car down in heavy breaking areas. Now 85kgs is a lot of weight! Some of the drivers probably don't even weigh that much, which is why i'm having a hard time believing that tidbit of info. Don't the cars have power brakes?
 
have yu ever driven a car? hard?

ive seen videos down at there feet its only a few cms that the pedel moves..

im not fit but i can lift 120 kgs with my legs but im only 100kgs (ya a fat basterd)
 
Well to give you an idea, when Grant Denyer (a T.v person turned racing driver here in Aus.) started driving V8 Supercars he could not press the brake. He had to use two feet to stop hard. I imagine an F1 car is even harder to stop. Remember it is basically impossible to lock the brakes on an F1 when travelling at high speed so you can basically push as hard as you like. It would be very very hard.
 
Your legs can lift and push a surprising amount of weight, especially if you do some form of physical activity which develops your leg muscles. I myself am only 65kg but can lift around 200kg with my legs. 85kg isn't overly difficult to handle pushing or lifting initially, but when you consider the drivers apply that force however many times a lap, every lap for the duration of the race (around 1hr 30mins generally) it is indeed no easy feat, but by all means achievable, especially by their bodies which as I'm sure you know are finely tuned.
 
According to Brembo, this means drivers have to apply as much as 105 kilograms of pressure to the brake pedal
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Thats from Formula1.com. It's explaining how much pressure is needed to be applied to the pedal during the Monaco Grand Prix. Monaco is one of the easiest on brakes, due to lower speeds, so you could say, at Monza for example, that it would be closer to 150kgs of pressure needed.

If you just search in google, you will find bits of information like this.
 
holy crap and i thought the G25's brake pedal was hard.:D
 
In 1996, Brundle said that the force of braking for the first chicane on the old Hockenheim circuit was sufficient enough to force a tear from his eye and onto the visor.
 
Remember people that these guys are pulling 5G under braking. So not only is 75kg really not that huge (I weigh 75kg and I don't have any problems walking around!) but they have the advantage of effectively 375kg of body weight to help them stand on the brakes. Obviously there is the initial brake pressure to overcome, but trust me, I bet if you measured the brake pressure on most road cars it'd be more than you think. I bet it's around 50kg.
 
I was just watching Inside Grand Prix on Speed, and they did a feature on brakes. The head of Brembo said that a driver requires 70-100kgs of pressure to slow the car down.
 
Probably not that heavy in isolation.......but try and pump out 500 repetitions of it and it would start to hurt.
 
anto-t said:
have yu ever driven a car? hard?

ive seen videos down at there feet its only a few cms that the pedel moves..

im not fit but i can lift 120 kgs with my legs but im only 100kgs (ya a fat basterd)
Click to expand...
with a single leg?

I do 115kg leg presses and I am around 70kg, but obviously with both legs.
 
Might be able to throw a bit more light on this. We were sorting stuff out with our Formula Student cars brakes. We couldn't get the rears to lock up at all (part of the requirements of scrutineering) and we were adjusting balance and cleaning the discs etc. I couldn't be bothered to get in the car so I tried to get the brakes to lock up with my hands. When driving, the effort I'd been putting into the pedal to lock up fronts was what I would consider light braking effort. In fact it was far too little as it would grab the fronts within the first few mm of brake travel. With my hands I was having to put all my weight behind it to even start to apply a satisfactory amount of brake force to the front! Furthermore, last year when testing the brakes, the 1in thick aluminum shear plate the pedal mounted to moved about an inch when applying full presure! There is no way on earth I could do that by hand!
 
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