Brembo's Race Against Time in Formula 1's New Era

In the shadows of Formula 1’s new era, Brembo is fighting a race of its own — one that starts long before the lights go out and stretches years into the future.

The Italian braking giant has been forced into a constant juggling act. It must supply flawless systems for the current generation of cars while already reshaping its technology for 2027, when F1’s combustion-to-electric power balance will shift again and tear up much of what has just been learned.

“The more time we have to develop the new system, the better it is,” admits race engineer Andrea Dellavedova. Yet time is exactly what Brembo does not have.

A moving target: 2027 and beyond

This season marked the beginning of F1’s latest technological reset, and braking has never been more intricate. Energy recovery, brake-by-wire, and the tight integration between combustion and electric power units have turned the brake pedal into a command center.

Brembo spent the first half of the year homing in on a specific development path. Then the goalposts moved.

“As next year the energy ratio will change, what we learned this year will not be that useful for the new development,” Dellavedova explains. The company had already started mapping out the braking system for 2027, only to be told that the combustion-to-electric split would be revised again.

After long debate, the FIA confirmed in June that the ratio will shift in two steps: 58:42 for 2027, then 60:40 in 2028. On paper, those numbers look minor. In practice, they reshape how much work the brakes and the hybrid systems must each do, and how aggressively Brembo can design discs, calipers, and materials to withstand new loads and temperatures.

So the engineers in northern Italy are back at the drawing board. “We have to think newly about the system,” Dellavedova says. “We cannot use all the info that we discovered this year for the next one.”

In a sport where tenths decide titles, that is a brutal admission.

Racing the clock

The pressure is not just technical. It is calendar-driven.

Teams want components early next year. Brembo, meanwhile, is dealing with a production chain that simply cannot be rushed. From the first CAD model to a race-ready brake disc is a journey measured in months, not weeks.

“The time horizon is very short, because the teams need the components for early next year,” Dellavedova notes. Carbon discs must endure a slow, meticulous manufacturing process. The material spends extended periods in ovens, passing through several heat-treatment stages that define its structure and performance window. Cut corners here and the system fails under the brutal demands of a Grand Prix.

The calipers are no easier. Precision machining devours hours on specialized equipment, and that’s before any of the parts see a test bench.

Sometimes testing and production even overlap. Brembo will be finalizing prototypes on dynos while early batches of components are already moving toward manufacturing, such is the urgency to hit F1’s unforgiving deadlines.

In a “very fast environment,” as Dellavedova calls it, even a few extra weeks of notice from the rule-makers would make a tangible difference. “If the communication would happen some weeks before… it's always easier, because we have to design and test the prototype, and then launch the production.”

Curno: Brembo’s “witch’s kitchen”

If there is a reason Brembo can cope with this relentless pace, it lies in Curno, near Bergamo. This is the company’s racing nerve center, its so‑called “witch’s kitchen,” where F1 braking systems are conceived, tortured, and refined.

Inside, several dyno test benches run almost non-stop — 24 hours a day, six days a week. They simulate race conditions, stress new materials, push new geometries to the limit. Discs glow, calipers scream, data pours in.

Crucially, everything sits under one roof. “The performance is there with both offices and also the production and testing department,” Dellavedova says. Designers and test engineers are separated by a staircase, not a continent.

A designer can sketch a new component on a laptop, walk to the first floor, and watch it come to life on a test rig. They can speak directly with the technicians running the dynos, study the parts in their hands, and feed that feedback straight back into the next iteration. No delays. No long email chains. Just rapid, tangible development.

That proximity, Dellavedova believes, is a major competitive advantage in a field where everyone is searching for microscopic gains.

Global footprint, local intensity

Brembo’s reach is vast. Its operational and administrative center sits in Kilometro Rosso, Bergamo’s science and technology park, and the company runs manufacturing and commercial facilities in 18 countries worldwide.

Yet for all that global scale, the heartbeat of its F1 program remains intensely local. Curno is where the race technology lives. It is where the company tries to stay a step ahead of regulations that keep shifting and teams that demand perfection.

The challenge of 2027 looms large. The rule tweaks, the compressed timelines, the need to essentially reset development just as this year’s systems begin to mature — all of it adds layers of complexity.

Still, Dellavedova is not blinking.

“In terms of timing, we are in line,” he says. “In terms of performance, based on our experience, yes, because, of course, we are doing the best that we think will be the best for the next year.”

The sport is accelerating toward a more electric future. The question now is simple: as the balance of power in F1 shifts, can Brembo keep braking right on the edge without ever crossing the line?