The new era of Formula 1 hasn’t just rewritten the rulebook for teams and power units. It has turned braking into one of the most complex engineering battlegrounds on the grid – and Brembo is right in the middle of the storm.
This season marks the start of a fresh technical cycle, but the Italian brake giant is already being dragged two ways at once: deliver flawless systems for today’s cars, while designing something fundamentally different for 2027 and beyond.
“It’s a massive task,” admits race engineer Andrea Dellavedova in an exclusive conversation with RacingNews365. And the reason sits at the heart of modern F1: the balance between combustion power and electric energy.
A Moving Target for 2027
The FIA’s decision to alter the combustion-to-electric power ratio has changed the game for everyone. For Brembo, the timing has made it even trickier.
“Now we have done half a year, so we understand more, and we were focusing on some direction,” Dellavedova explains. “As next year the energy ratio will change, what we learned this year will not be that useful for the new development.”
That’s the sting. Half a season of data, simulations, and track feedback, and suddenly the target shifts.
This year, Brembo had already begun sketching out the 2027 braking system. Then came confirmation of the new ratios. After long discussions, the FIA locked in a two-step change: 58:42 for 2027, then 60:40 for 2028. On paper, those are just numbers. In practice, they rewrite how the car decelerates, how energy is recovered, and how much work the friction brakes must do.
“So now 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.”
The pressure is obvious. The more the hybrid side of the car evolves, the more the mechanical braking system has to be reimagined, not just tweaked.
A Brutal Timeline
F1 doesn’t wait. The calendar rolls on, and the factories have to keep up.
“Being in a very fast environment, the more time we have to develop the new system, the better it is,” Dellavedova notes. If the regulations land late, the squeeze begins. “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.”
The time window is tight. Teams want components early next year. Brembo has to move from concept to CAD, to prototype, to dyno, to final production – all while supplying race-critical hardware every weekend.
“The time horizon is very short, because the teams need the components for early next year,” he says. “From the design to the production phase, it takes months; it’s not something that you can do in weeks.”
The process is painstaking. Carbon discs and materials don’t just roll off a line; they spend long stretches in ovens, going through multiple cycles and treatments. Callipers sit for hours on precision machines. The parts that stop an F1 car from 330 km/h are born slowly, under strict control.
“Also, the calliper itself, they have to spend a lot of time on the machine. Then there is also the testing. Sometimes we do the testing and the production in parallel.”
That’s how tight it is: validation and manufacturing running side by side just to hit the deadline.
Curno: Brembo’s 24/6 “Witch’s Kitchen”
For all the pressure, Brembo doesn’t start from scratch. It leans on a deep, well-drilled operation.
The company’s operational and administrative heart beats at Kilometro Rosso, Bergamo’s science and technology park, with manufacturing and commercial sites spread across 18 countries. But for F1, the real magic happens nearby, in Curno.
That is where the racing technology lives.
“We have several dyno test benches that we use to test the new developments in terms of both materials, geometries and also dimensions of the braking system,” Dellavedova explains. Those benches don’t sleep. “They are running 24 hours per day, 6 days per week.”
The nickname inside Brembo is telling: a “witch’s kitchen” where engineers constantly cook up new solutions. Heat cycles, pressure spikes, full-race simulations – all hammered through the test rigs before a single part sees a circuit.
What sets Brembo apart, Dellavedova believes, is how close every stage of that process sits under one roof.
“The performance is there with both offices and also the production and testing department,” he says. The designers and the test teams aren’t separated by continents or time zones. They’re separated by a staircase.
“We are very close, so the designer can work on the laptop, design the new component and in a very fast way they just go to the first floor — the dyno test benches are there with the people working directly on the tests,” he explains. That proximity speeds everything up: feedback, fixes, fresh ideas. “They have a very fast way of communicating, and also they can physically inspect the products that they are developing.”
In a sport where a few weeks’ delay can kill a concept, that matters as much as any clever geometry or carbon recipe.
Confidence in the Middle of Change
The scale of the 2027 challenge is obvious. The energy ratio changes, the braking demands shift, and a huge chunk of current learning gets pushed aside. Yet Dellavedova isn’t rattled.
“Preparing for 2027 is a serious challenge,” he accepts, but he leans on Brembo’s capacity, infrastructure, and sheer mileage in motorsport. The company has seen regulation swings before. It has lived through the birth of hybrids, the rise of ever-heavier cars, and the relentless climb in performance.
“In terms of timing, we are in line,” he says. No drama, just a clear statement. “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.”
F1’s new era will ask more of the brakes than ever. If Brembo gets it right, no one will notice on Sunday – the cars will just stop, lap after lap, corner after corner. If it gets it wrong, the whole world will see.
That’s the thin line they’re working on now, deep inside that “witch’s kitchen” in Curno, as 2027 rushes towards them.
