Brakes
There are a range of brake upgrades in GT7 for both pads and discs. Pads are either Original, Sports, or Racing. Discs are either Original, Sports, Racing (slotted), Racing (drilled), or Carbon. Installing better brakes will raise the car’s Performance points, but the incremental effect for pads is smaller than for discs. On my Silvia Q’s test car, the PP increase steps meant that OE discs with Racing pads had a lower PP than Sports discs with just OE pads. Likewise Sports discs with Racing pads were outranked by Racing discs on even OE pads. So there is a continuum or ladder of Disc1(Pad1, Pad2, Pad3), Disc2(Pad1,Pad2,Pad3) etc.
Interestingly, both types of Racing (slotted or drilled), and Carbon discs have the exact same PP. The tuning shop advises that Racing slotted and drilled are equal in performance, but the Carbons being equal are a little surprising.
These PP differences are borne out in some “lock the wheels” braking tests I have done, higher PPs brake setups lock wheels easier/more quickly.
Summary:
Upgrade brakes as you upgrade tyres.
Pads are smaller upgrades than discs.
Don’t always just slap the biggest brakes on (especially if ABS is off).
High speed tracks will usually need bigger brakes.
Altering brake balance will overall weaken brakes, so you may need bigger ones to counter.
What brakes should I fit?
The most important factor when deciding which brakes to fit is: what tyres am I running? The reason is this; the brakes should be capable of locking the wheels (really this means overwhelming tyre grip - locking the tyres). Weak brakes with grippy racing tyres will never lock, the brakes will be at full capacity but still the tyre could take more. You are therefore under-braked for your tyre setup (or conversely, over-tyred for your brake setup). If you fit better brakes then the tyre will be used to a fuller extent and your braking performance will increase, your stopping distance will decrease, and this means faster lap times.
You can check if you are under-braked by doing some test runs and doing emergency stops. If you are using no ABS, then you will hear the tyres squeal, smoke, and eventually the tyre indicator on the HUD will turn red. If you have ABS on (weak or default), then the ABS light will flash to indicate you are locking the tyres and the ABS had activated. Be aware that the ABS will trigger quite easily, but with no ABS you can get a lot of squealing before the tyre indicators finally turn red; the ABS, if it were on, would already have activated. Straight line braking is a good default test (have a couple of decent straights on your track, or go to one of the speedways or SSRX if you have it unlocked). It’s a little unrealistic for most track uses, but it’s a good standard test under controlled conditions. If you are on a twisty track and trail brake then you will get different wheel lock situations as the tyre loadings are different and uneven. So it’s best to first get a ballpark brake setup on the straights, then you can put it to test on the twisty bits as a second stage. Watch those tyre indicators/ABS light!
As you fit and test better and better brake combos, you will move from:
i) Cannot lock the brakes at all. (this stage may not occur with CH tyres even on weak standard brakes).
ii) Brakes don’t lock instantly but as the car slows, they will lock.
iii) Brakes lock promptly, even at high speed.
iv) Brakes have a hair trigger (most likely on Comfort tyres with fully upgraded brakes, may not occur with Racing tyres even on the best brakes).
You generally want to be somewhere around iii). But it’s better to have too much brake than not enough (if using ABS). If your car can’t lock at high speed then that’s performance being left on the table, but if they lock quickly at high speed they will lock too easily at low speed. If you have ABS off, hair trigger brakes like this are especially problematic, you will lock wheels too easily and slide. With ABS on then you have a very good safety net, so won’t be punished severely by large brakes, but remember that it’s not perfect. If you just dump the brakes, let the ABS sort it out and steer into a corner at full brake with ABS flashing, you will partially lose steering ability (although you will still have some steering). Some pedal control is still useful.
Tyres still turn red even with ABS on, it’s just a lot, lot milder and slower to happen. I have not carried out durability tests but presumably with tyre wear on, cooking your tyres will drastically reduce tyre life (as in previous GT games)
You ideally want to be able to lock at full brake pedal but have a good range of sensitivity before that.
Minimum Required Brakes - Silvia Q’s
Results for my 100mph 0-mph brake test, default brake balance, no ABS, the fronts are always the ones to lock. These brake pad/discs will eventually lock but not straight away at 100 mph, so these are the bare minimum, go one or two pads better if you want better lock at high speed in a straight line. I don’t know how this will translate to other cars.
| Tyre | Min Brake/Pad needed to lock | Tyre | Min Brake/Pad needed to lock | Tyre | Min Brake/Pad needed to lock |
| CH | OE/OE | SH | Sp/OE | RH | Rc/OE |
| CM | OE/OE | SM | Rc/OE | RM | Rc/OE |
| CS | Sp/OE | SS | Rc/OE | RS | Rc/Rc!!! |
Brake Balance
If you are using the Brake Balance controller and adjust brake balance e.g rearwards, then this will work by weakening front brakes (the brake pedal bar meter has red bits at the top, indicating decreased overall power). Therefore you lose braking force overall and might need to use a bigger brake to begin with.
In general, I usually investigate brake balance with ABS off. You can see which tyres lock that way. Try adjusting rearwards to get your rear tyres to do a bit more work, then check the handling particularly at corner entry. You can then turn ABS back on if you prefer driving with it, and check handling again, but at least you know you’ve tried to maximise all four wheels’ braking ability.
If you just tune with ABS on, the ABS light will flash but you won’t always know which wheel(s) were trying to lock up.
Note that brake balance “zero” does not mean front and rears are equal strength, it’s just the factory starting position, which is front brakes stronger for every car I have heard of in real life (often 66% front 33% rear or similar). The +/- adjustments are just offsets from that factory default. So feel free to bias the rears in GT7, you’ll soon know if you’ve overdone it as the back end will come out when trail braking. Usually this is worse on MR drivetrain cars. If this happens after a brake adjustment then un-bias the brakes a notch (or tune around it with other settings).
Tyre G
Tyre max G will vary depending on car and setup. On my Silvia Q’s, stock, the lateral G (40 mph slow speed) ratings from the settings menu were:
| CH | 0.82 | SH | 1.05 | RH | 1.25 |
| CM | 0.90 | SM | 1.09 | RM | 1.29 |
| CS | 0.99 | SS | 1.16 | RS | 1.33 |
These figures seem quite realistic. If a road car can pull 1G on its factory tyres it’s doing very well.
Notes
I have not tested aero cars. These can pull more G and so the tyres’ Max G increases and I think you will need bigger brakes. For Racing tyres (which you would expect aero race cars to be wearing), you will probably need the best brakes you can get).
I have not tested if brakes can fade, wear, or have an optimum temperature. There’s no telemetry for this in GT7 so it’s not possible to say if it’s even modelled. The fact that fuel and tyre wear are not always on means that I would probably turn both on before testing in case any brake model is linked to tyres.
Using OE stock pads with large aftermarket Brembo calipers is a little weird, but it is viable in game. In real life, applying stock pads to the abuse given in a typical GT7 “track day” would likely result in mega brake fade or even pads disintegrating.
But yeah, the high-RPM camshaft can be useful. Personally, I tend to stay away from it as it doesn't increase the torque in the engine (at least the ones I've added it to). I think the racing crankshaft works the same way.
