People tend to drive their cars differently and very rarely do you really get to know the limits of your car. One of the advantages of heading to a track is to know what your sports car can do. And having a large run of space after finding out what your car can’t do is also an advantage.

One of the first issues I faced at the track was brake fade; the brake pedals went soft and the car took longer to stop. My car didn’t want to slow down fast enough to take the turn, but i was able to stop the car in the huge run off space.

This is due to the high amount of heat generated by the brakes, which transfers to the brake fluid causing it to boil. When the brake fluid boils, it reduces the compression and the brakes don’t clamp down on the rotors with the same amount of pressure; In extreme cases you could even lose the ability to stop your car.

I am going to be flushing my brake fluid and replacing the BMW fluid with Castrol SRF. Castrol has created a super-duty brake fluid which can handle temperatures above BMW (and DOT5) rating. While the improved brake fluid will keep my brakes from going soft; the next step would be to upgrade my current brakes to  improve stopping distance and cooling.