BRAKING POINT...

From drums to discs, slide calipers to monoblocs... brakes have come a long way over the years.

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BRAKES ARE A FUNDAMENTAL PART OF ALL RIDING. AND THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND THEM HAS IMPROVED ALMOST UNIMAGINABLY.

What do you need brakes for? They only slow you down." I've been using this clearly brilliant dad joke in brake features for decades now, and I’m unwilling to give it up just yet (sorry, not sorry). The joke is a paradox, of course: better brakes will slow you down more, which makes you go faster around a track. More powerful stoppers let you push your braking point further back, meaning you spend more time flat-out on the straights. Funny, huh?

But brakes are a fundamental part of all riding. And the technology behind them has improved almost unimaginably over the past 50 or 60 years, with massive leaps in performance and usability. In 1965, a typical European ‘superbike’ might be something like the Triumph Bonneville T120, a 650cc air-cooled OHV twin, with 46bhp peak power and an eight-inch single-leading-shoe drum front brake, operated by a cable. In 2025, though, we’ve got the Ducati Panigale V4S Tricolore, which uses the latest Brembo performance brake kit up front: a pair of 338mm diameter, 6.2mm thick finned T-Drive stainless steel discs, clamped by two GP4 Sport Production four-piston radial-mount monobloc billet aluminium calipers, complete with extensive cooling fins.