u/Aquila1111

In an exclusive interview with The Race, Brembo’s F1 customer manager Andrea Algeri says he is fascinated by what some are planning.

“We have seen different approaches across the teams,” he said.

“It’s mainly on the rear, because the rear axle design depends on how they design the power unit, the energy recovery, and their strategy and so on - and we are a bit blind in this sense.

“But we have received a target from the teams and it says, ‘OK we want to go with this kind of braking torque, so we would like to have this kind of dimension. So let's design the best possible braking system within these limits’.

“But the reason why they have some of these numbers is not clear to us. We have seen some outliers that will be very clever solutions if they are right. Otherwise, they will have to redo the braking system after a few tests or a few races!

This article came out last year with Brembo giving insight on the different requirements teams have given them for designing their brake systems for the 2026 regulations given that energy harvesting and braking primarily happen from the rear axle, so many teams have gone the extreme way in essentially keeping minimal braking in the rear and instead relying on energy harvesting in slowing the car down. This would have interesting consequences in energy rich circuits like Monaco, where you hit the harvest limit for the lap quite early, and then subsequently have a radically different brake performance for the rest of the lap as the rear axle cannot harvest more.

Also for Charles, maybe Ferrari is one of the teams that have implemented/ordered a more extreme brake system from Brembo; hence the irregular performance. Not many other teams are reporting any brake issues though (AFAIK), so maybe their custom brake systems are better