R32 GTR Brakes Break Breaking My First RB26

With the car now at home after the Calder park outing,  it was time to access the damage. During the process of getting the car ready to tow, it was noticed that brake fluid was around the inside of the left hand front wheel. It was at that point that i started thinking perhaps a brake failure had caused lack of deceleration down into turn one and the resulting oil pump failure. On the drive home i pondered possible scenarios and the best one i could come up with is that i popped a caliper seal leaving me with no brakes.

Inxile had been running a set of new standard Nissan/Sumitomo brake pads up until this point and i had hoped to do a brake comparison between the standard pads and a couple of types of aftermarket pads back to back. Prior to Calder these pads had done two Phillip Island track days and although i had noted their poor braking performance, the wear they had encountered had only been minimal and as such i expected them to make it through the day at Calder park.

The first session was a light warm up and as this was my first time at Calder, i used it to make myself familiar. The second session come around fairly quick, and it was this session that i realised how hard on the brakes turn one is. It was a 200km/h stop down to around a 70km/h turn in. This kind of stop once a lap didn't seem that bad but i could feel the brakes not liking it especially toward the end of the stop. It was then in the 3rd session that i had worked out to get through the chicane on the back straight flat out. This then added a 180km/h down to 60km/h stop into an already short 1.10 minute lap. Toward the end on this session i could smell the brakes burning and the car was really struggling to pull up for the turns. At the end of the session i felt a brake check was in order. The visible pad on each side showed about 50% left. A good idea at this point would have been to pull the wheels off and make sure the inside pad told the same story, but it was lunch time and i was hungry.

The car had felt ok during the 3rd session so now in the 4th session i was giving it my all and the only weakness was the brakes, they had started to feel inconsistent and on what would be my last lap of that day, they gave way. Upon the resulting inspection at home in the garage i now have a better idea what went wrong. The inside pads have overheated and lost there material, leaving the backing plate as my pad. The backing plate has then heated up enough for the brake caliper pistons to punch a hole through the backing plate which in turn allowed the caliper seal to leak resulting in the lost of brakes into turn one. This forced me to use engine braking. In the heat of the moment i selected 2nd gear, unfortunatley i was carrying to much speed for 2nd. This buzzed the motor to well over 8000rpm at which point the oil pump said goodbye.

Lessons learned from this encounter have been, do more track research, as apparently it was common knowledge that Calder park eats pads like no tomorrow. The other is that when you think you have a brake issue you should probably check all pads front and rear, no excuses.

Well at this point im pulling the motor out and stripping to check for further damage, at this point it is limited to front calipers, rotors and pads, with the oil pump gone in the motor.