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MotoGP brake manufacturer Brembo has laid the fault for Maverick Vinales’ brake problems at last week’s Styrian Grand Prix firmly on the shoulders of the Monster Energy Yamaha rider.
Vinales brought out the red flags during the second race in a week at the Red Bull Ring when he was forced to jump from his bike at Turn 1, after entering the corner halfway though the race to discover he had no way to slow the machine.
Suffering throughout the race with fading brakes – a similar issue to the one that plagued fellow Yamaha rider Fabio Quartararo two weeks earlier – the Spaniard was lucky to walk away from the high-speed incident.
However, speaking to The Race, Brembo has been clear in its explanation of the fault by stating that it was caused by the rider’s decision to rely on last year’s specification of brakes rather than the Italian firm’s new and improved 2020 design.
“The main problem of Maverick was incorrect choice of the specification of caliper to use in the race,” Brembo engineer Andrea Bergami explained.
“I explained and suggested to all Yamaha teams what spec to use, and obviously it was the 2020 caliper that is optimised for this type of track.
“But the choice of which spec to use for the race weekend is up to the team, and we can’t oblige them to use a certain one.
“We can make a clear suggestion but after that it is up to Maverick’s team and the rider decided to go with an incorrect specification, and what happened is related to this.
“Of course we are very sorry for what happened to Maverick, and we want to have all our riders happy with the performance of our braking system.
“He paid for this decision and the other Yamaha guys were very happy. At the end of the weekend, Valentino [Rossi] was very happy with how we had improved his braking system.”
Vinales’ incident aside, Brembo felt it was a really successful weekend on its end.
It marked the new system’s first visit to the hardest-braking circuit of the year and, designed in large part to deal with the stresses inflicted by the Austrian venue, the new caliper proved its worth, according to Bergami.
“We introduced our new caliper because the braking effort from the new MotoGP bikes is increasing. We needed to improve the ventilation system, in order to make the performance more consistent, especially when the temperatures are high, to cool down the braking system during the race weekend.
“For sure one of the most important improvements is the fins. As you can see on all the bikes at a track like Spielberg, the bikes are using air ducts to push as much air as possible onto the fins to cool the caliper. Cooling the calipers also cools the carbon material in the pads and the disc so that it’s in the correct working temperature, too.
“In the other tracks at this moment only Ducati, LCR and Suzuki are always using the new design, but I think after this weekend in Austria in which more or less everyone was using the new spec they will start from Misano to use it every weekend. The riders have felt the benefit from it now and it would be difficult to move back to the old spec.”
However, given the rapid pace of current MotoGP development, Bergami admitted that Brembo is also already hard at work on a revised system that could debut as early as the middle of 2021, as some MotoGP riders continue to lean increasingly on the braking benefits offered by their bikes.
“We are always working on a new specification – we can’t stop because the performance of the bikes always continues to improve the braking system for them. We’re happy with the performance of the new system but we’re already working on the new spec for the next years to follow the continuous growth of the bikes, which has been incredible in the past year.
“It’s difficult to say when it’ll be ready because it depends on the urgency of when we need it. We had two races on the most demanding track of the year and everything went in the right way so there’s no urgency yet, but we could see something new for the second half of next season.”
