Re: Autozone racing pads! Duralast GT
Back in 2013 at Road America, the guy who finished the first day in P1 had NAPA Ceramic pads.
ROAD FRICKING AMERICA FOLKS!!!
Go ahead and tell him that he was running the wrong brake pads on. I'll wait right here.
Meanwhile, I had the pleasure of driving a consistently overall winning A class car this summer that had some very fancy and expensive brake pad compounds. The brake feel was similar to jamming a two-by-four against the plastic wheel of an old Radio Flyer wagon while screaming down Deadman's Hill.
In summary; not all "street pads" are going to implode after a day or two of racing, and not all "racing pads" are going to do what you want them to.
I attended the second RA race as crew for a very fast Class B Festiva. We were in P2 at the end of day #1.This car had very "oversize" front brakes and we were using the old fronts on the rear! In prepping the car for Day 2 (Sun.) I found that the front brake pads were nearly down to metal. I asked for the "spare set" and was told there were none! Why not I asked! I was told that they pads on the front of the car had been on there for the past 6 race days!
That's what racing pads and "big brakes" will do on a light car. That said we ended up getting the "best" pads we could buy for the car for Sundays race, which were of course street pads. We still ended up winning class B by 10 seconds! This included setting fastest laps of the race for the car in the last 1/2 hour of the race.
One comment I will give about RA is that while it is fast the turns are far apart which gives the brakes time to cool and if your car handles well you don't even have to slow the car much or at all for some turns.