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Explaining the magic of F1 brakes

A Formula 1 car's brakes can dissipate almost three times as much energy as the engine is capable of producing - so they're vitally important to setting a lap time, as former Renault and Williams chief technical officer PAT SYMONDS explains

Even a spirited driver rarely considers their brakes when driving on the road.

An emergency stop usually prompts little more than a fleeting thankfulness for the efficiency of modern braking systems, and in reality what you might consider hard braking for a roundabout uses only a small part of the potential braking performance available to you.

And while that determined late braking might have seemed daring, braking in an F1 car is something else. Not only is the deceleration phenomenal, it's done time and time again during the course of a lap.

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