At this weekend’s race I tried two new things: Performance Friction brake pads, and the new HANS sliding tethers.
The first one was new brake pads. I’ve been pretty happy with the Hawk HT-10/Blue combination that I’ve used for a while now. But during the preparations for this race weekend, I put on new brake rotors, and noticed that the HT-10 front pads were starting to crack and crumble even though they were only about half worn.
BTW, this was the first time I’ve put new rotors on the car — the ones I took off were the ones that were on the car when I bought it! Compare that to the Subarus that Derek and I used to drive, which needed new brake rotors (which were 5x more expensive!) every weekend. Yay, BMW!
I decided to try Performance Friction brake pads instead. Last season at a test day I was able to drive a BMWCCA JP Z3 owned by Tom Bell, and his brakes felt fantastic compared to mine. I asked him about his brake pads and he told me he was using the PFs. It didn’t occur to me later that in BMWCCA he could have been using some larger rotors and calipers too, which I cannot do in ITR, but I haven’t confirmed. These pads are also very popular among the BMWCCA racers on bimmerforums.com. Consensus there was to use the PF01 compound in the front and the PF97 in the rear, so that’s what I did.
Well, I didn’t like them. I found the pedal to be firmer, which was a welcome change. But the front brakes seemed to lock fairly easily, and even worse, I had a very hard time getting them to unlock once they did. With the Hawks, I could just do a very subtle lift and get the tire rolling again, but I felt like I had to get off the pedal altogether with the PFs.
During qualifying, I locked the right front so many times going into the corkscrew, that the final time flat-spotted the tire to the point where I could most definitely feel the vibration. After the session, we inspected it only to discover that it was almost down to the cord at the flat spot. The real bummer? That tire was brand new for that session. I got 20 minutes of use out of it, and had to throw it away. Expensive mistake.
I’m not sure if I’ll keep these and try to get used to them, or if I’ll go back to the Hawk pads. I need to sleep on it.
The second new product I tried was the new HANS Sliding Tether System. For those who don’t know, a HANS Device is a Head And Neck Restraint System. In a crash, it keeps the head from moving too much away from the torso. Experts say that if Dale Earnheart had been wearing one of these, he quite possibly wouldn’t have died.
One complaint many drivers have about the HANS is that it limits how far you can turn your head side-to-side. I’ve never even noticed it on the track (you don’t need to turn your head all that far), but it has been an issue in the paddock. The sliding tethers fix that problem without impacting safety.
My review: thumbs up! I no longer felt the need to release the harnesses when driving the car around the paddock. You really can no longer tell you are wearing a HANS at all. Since they recommend switching your tethers out every couple of years anyway, everyone with a HANS should get these next time they do maintenance on the device.
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