The 24 tracks used in 2025 by Formula 1 present different characteristics in terms of stress for the Brembo braking systems of the single-seaters. Below explained which are the most demanding for the brakes and why.
In 2025 Brembo celebrates half a century of continuous presence in Formula 1: a significant milestone for a company that was born only in 1961 and that initially limited itself to supplying cast iron discs for Scuderia Ferrari.
Starting from the eighties however Brembo supplies to the teams also its own calipers and their success has been such that also in 2025, as in the previous two championships, all the Formula 1 teams have chosen to focus on the combination of efficiency, lightness, and stiffness of the calipers from the Brembo group.
The calipers are made in co-design with the team managers, in order to arrive at producing customized calipers for each single-seater. However the involvement of Brembo engineers does not end here because they are present on the circuits for every GP in order to advise the drivers and the teams on the best solutions to adopt depending on the characteristics of the various tracks.
And it is precisely to the Brembo engineers engaged in Formula 1 that we asked to make an evaluation of the GPs of the 2025 season, with the aim of defining the difficulty of each track for the braking system.
The variables taken into consideration to draw up the ranking of the most demanding circuits for the brakes of Formula 1 are multiple. We present them one at a time, so as to make it easier to understand the reasoning that led to the final ranking.
The most violent brakings
One of the factors that allows the circuits to be correctly classified is the intensity of the brakings: in Saudi Arabia, in Canada and in Azerbaijan there are for example 6 braking points per lap in the High category, the highest for effort required of the brakes and of the driver. In Belgium and in Singapore 5 while in Qatar there is a single High braking.
The High brakings are characterized by a deceleration of at least 4 g, a use of the brakes longer than one and a half seconds and a load on the pedal of over 130 kg, but above all with a braking power index of at least 2,000 kW.
The number of brakings
Another element that affects the toughness of a track is the number of brakings per lap. As is evident this value is greater in street circuits: in the narrow streets of the Principality of Monaco the Formula 1 drivers use the brakes 15 times, in Singapore 12 and in Baku 11.
Besides the scenery, these circuits are however very different from each other, as shown by their respective lengths: ranging from the 3,337 meters of Monte Carlo to the 6,000 meters of the Azerbaijani track, passing through the 4,940 meters of Singapore.
There are instead only 6 brakings per lap in the Spanish GP, in Austria, as well as in Monza and in Las Vegas and even just 5 in Brazil.
It is evident that the lower the number of brakings, the longer the time between one braking and the next, thus allowing the braking system to breathe before the next deceleration.
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The layout of the brakings
However, the number of brakings in a lap can be misleading because it does not provide information on their layout and therefore the intervals that separate them. Very hard brakings, typical of stop-and-go tracks, contribute to raising the brake temperature, but if they are spaced apart by fast track sections they allow the braking system to gain precious seconds to cool down properly.
On the contrary, intense brakings one after another hinder the cooling of the braking system, as happens in Austria where in the first 4 corners, including turn number 2 which is only hinted at and does not involve speed reductions, there are 3 brakings with stopping distances of at least 90 meters, decelerations greater than 170 km/h and pedal loads of over 140 kg each.
How Brembo tackles the most demanding circuits for the brakes
At this point some of you may be wondering whether the difficulty of the circuits for the brakes also impacts the characteristics of the braking systems used.
As far as the calipers are concerned there are no variations whatsoever because, as explained previously, the morphology of the caliper is tied to the characteristics of the single-seater for which it was designed. However the performance and efficiency of the caliper is also conditioned by the setup of the brake duct which as such varies from track to track: in some cases it must bring a lot of air to the brakes, in others instead it must avoid them cooling too much.
Depending on the temperatures reached by the brakes on a track the teams choose which Brembo carbon discs to use: where maximum cooling is needed front discs with 1,050 holes and rear discs with 800 holes are employed, while in less extreme conditions some teams opt for brake discs with a smaller number of ventilation holes.
The final evaluation
Of all these variables and of others more difficult to quantify the Brembo technicians took into account to classify the effort required of the braking systems by the 24 circuits of the 2025 Formula 1 season, also using data collected from past editions.
For the occasion a scale from 1 to 5 was used: the lowest value, obtained by Suzuka and Silverstone corresponds to a modest involvement for the brakes. The stress is instead maximum for the Italian GP (Monza) and for the Bahrain GP (Sakhir) and high, although not at those levels, for Jeddah, Montreal, Spa-Francorchamps, Spielberg, Baku and Mexico City.