It was thanks also to these calipers that, in 1999, Kenny Roberts Jr won 4 GP races on his Suzuki RGV and ended the 500 class championship in second place. Also in 2000 he won 4 GP that combined with other 5 podiums allowed him to clinch his first world title, two races before the end of the season.
Over the years, Brembo’s radial mounted calipers became standard parts on the track from 500-MotoGP down, for anyone who wanted great braking sensitivity and unmatched performance.
The switch from track to mass production for road-going motorbikes was but a short step. The Brembo engineers opted for a smaller caliper so the center distance was also reduced to 100 mm (3.9 in), and this has since become the standard measurement for the radial calipers of European road bikes. In Japan on the other hand, the urge to maintain that tie between supersport bikes for road use and those for competitions led to keeping the 108 center distance, which has therefore become the fixed reference for nearly all the Japanese sports versions.
That’s why, when Brembo launched the Stylema caliper at the end of 2017, it made it with a 100 mm center distance for European manufacturers but then developed a separate 108 version specifically for the Suzuki Hayabusa, the first bike in the world to use the Stylema 108 mm model. And despite happening this way purely by chance, it does seem like the two companies have come full circle since 1999 when one launched the first Hayabusa and the other the first radial caliper.