Here's why you need a big brake kit for road track use

[NOT A TA]

As you guys may have heard while watching races on TV Sebring is notorious for being tough on brakes. They warned me in tech inspection, and I told them I was going to go easy Saturday because I know my (stock with upgrade pads/shoes) brakes have a tough time on the long courses. I normally replace all the pads/shoes/fluid after a weekend on a road track because this is whats left by Sunday afternoon at the longer tracks I've run at. It's probably a good thing I missed a couple sessions with a tire problem or things might have gotten really ugly. Usually they look a little better than this (but not much) at the other tracks if I run ALL the sessions. I missed 2 out of 8 sessions at Sebring and hardly used the brakes the first 2 sessions because I was going fairly slow, never having been there before.

The pads in the pic below were brand new with just "bedding in" miles and about a hundered highway miles on them when I went to the track. You can see how shiny the audible wear indicator still is without any cleaning. I took these pads off very, very, gently so I could document how hard road tracks are on stock brakes even with upgraded pads etc. The pieces laying on the side literally fell onto the floor where they are as I was removing the pads. You can easily crumble the remaining pad material right off of the rivets when they get this bad. They were severly overheated, even though I was trying to be very cautious with them. I knew by the end of my last session that the pads were going away by the pedal pressure required just to slow the car and ran the last couple laps slower to be on the "safe" side. LOL