Brembo provided flights from Austin to Paris and accommodation so Ars could attend Le Mans and visit the Brembo factory. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.
LE MANS, FRANCE—It's 2 am at the Circuit de la Sarthe, just a few hours from Paris, France. The 24 Hours of Le Mans race is nearly halfway through, and fans are late-night snacking, snoozing in their sleeping bags, or pressed up against the fence to watch the cars zip by. The sound is thunderous as a batch of hypercars pass, each brand with a distinctive pattern of notes.
The real show after darkness falls is not the laser lights or drone formation but the sight of red-hot brake calipers glowing through the front wheels at the turns. Turn four, in particular, put on a display of fiery orange and red, visible to the naked eye.
For the first time, all 62 cars on the 2025 Le Mans starting grid were equipped with at least one component—including calipers, discs, and pads—made by a single manufacturer: Brembo. The glowing brakes are a result of high friction and high temperatures that start at 574˚ Fahrenheit (300˚ Celsius) and soar past the 1500-degree (815˚ C) mark, and the components undergo extreme stress. Impressively, these systems are designed to endure through a whole race without changing a single element, despite Le Mans now being a 24-hour sprint race. (Mid-race brake changes were commonplace back when the cars were more fragile.)
A test bench for production car brakes
Brembo is based in Bergamo, Italy, about an hour from Milan. The headquarters are inside the Kilometro Rosso innovation district, marked by a long red wall easily visible from the top of Bergamo's historic district. Founded in 1961, Brembo established a relationship with Alfa Romeo early on with brake discs and later launched a successful partnership with the Ferrari racing team that remains active today.
It's easy to recognize Brembo's bright-red calipers from a distance. They scream for attention, and deservedly so, since they're often part of higher and more expensive trim packages for production cars. On World Endurance Championship and Formula 1 cars, the calipers may be painted different colors depending on the brand, but they work the same.