Brembo Data MotoGP 2018 Shell Malaysia

At the Malaysian GP the MotoGPs use the brakes for 35 seconds per lap

For the fifth year in a row, the penultimate round of the MotoGP World Championship will be staged at the Sepang International Circuit. The Malaysian GP is held from 2 to 4 November on the circuit designed by Hermann Tilke and inaugurated in March 1999.

Located 85 km from Kuala Lumpur, within a 260-hectare palm oil plantation, it is the second longest track in the World after Silverstone and one of the toughest for the MotoGP braking systems.

Formula 1 also competed here but the brakes of the cars were less stressed than those of the bikes. For the MotoGP, the numerous braking points, the high percentage of time spent braking and the tropical climate make the handling of temperatures quite critical, both for the brakes and for the pilots: in 2015, during the race, the air temperature was of 35 degrees and that of the asphalt of 47 degrees.

In 2016, however, the rain was protagonist in FP2, FP4, Q1, Q2 and even in the race: several pilots tried the Brembo carbon discs to overcome the problems of variability of the weather and intermittent rain. That experiment proved to be decisive for the victories in 2017, under the rain, by Marc Marquez in Misano Adriatico and Andrea Dovizioso in Motegi with carbon discs.

According to Brembo engineers who assist 100 percent of the 2018 MotoGP riders, the Sepang International Circuit falls into the category of highly demanding braking circuits. On a scale from 1 to 5, a difficulty index of 5 was deserved, a value also recorded by Motegi, Spielberg and Barcelona.