Brembo is busy fine‑tuning Ferrari’s brake package to suit Lewis Hamilton’s hands — and feet — as the seven-time champion continues settling into life in red.
Andrea Algeri, Brembo’s F1 customer manager, says the supplier has been working through Hamilton’s feedback after a mixed opening phase to his Ferrari tenure. Hamilton spent his entire Mercedes career on Carbon Industrie hardware; the switch to Brembo was always going to feel different.
“It was very exciting to start to work with Lewis,” Algeri told The Race. “Obviously, we had some complaints from him within our regular communication and so on, and we are working hard to try to put him in a comfort zone in terms of braking.”
That comfort zone is about more than discs and pads. Ferrari’s braking behavior is a cocktail: hydraulic braking, engine braking and energy recovery all layered together. Change one ingredient and the blend shifts.
“We know he was used to a different material first, but also a different set-up in terms of general braking of the car that are not only the brakes themselves, but also engine braking, energy recovery and so on,” Algeri said. “So we have been pushing a lot from the team, and we are working hard to try to solve the situation and to have the best result from him.”
Hamilton hinted at the learning curve after a spin in Belgian Grand Prix Sprint qualifying, referencing a “new component.” It later emerged he was trying a fresh combination of Brembo discs and pads at Spa — exactly the sort of experimentation that can unlock feel, or bite back, in the short term.
Ferrari, now fielding Hamilton alongside Charles Leclerc in 2025, is applying its own pressure. “Ferrari is obviously pushing to be in front, and as usual, is one of the teams that gave us the right pressure to go ahead,” Algeri added. “We are happy to do it. It’s challenging… but it is also the way we get to improve our product.”
Part of that challenge is philosophical. Algeri says Brembo’s material targets stable performance across a wide temperature range and very low wear. Some drivers love that predictability; others coming from different suppliers simply need time to acclimatise.
That’s the crux of it. Modern F1 braking isn’t just about stopping late; it’s about what the driver feels through the pedal as the hybrid systems shuffle energy and the car dances on the edge. Hamilton built a career trusting that sensation implicitly. Rebuilding that trust with new hardware is painstaking, iterative work — the sort that pays back on lap 58 rather than lap one.
Brembo’s job is to get Hamilton back to that unconscious click between brain, foot and carbon. If they nail it, Ferrari doesn’t just gain confidence under braking. It gains the full version of Lewis Hamilton.
