LE MANS, FRANCE—It's 2 am at the Circuit de la Sarthe, just a few hours from Paris, France. The 24 Hours of Le Mans race is nearly halfway through, and fans are late-night snacking, snoozing in their sleeping bags, or pressed up against the fence to watch the cars zip by. The sound is thunderous as a batch of hypercars pass, each brand with a distinctive pattern of notes.
The real show after darkness falls is not the laser lights or drone formation but the sight of red-hot brake calipers glowing through the front wheels at the turns. Turn four, in particular, put on a display of fiery orange and red, visible to the naked eye.
For the first time, all 62 cars on the 2025 Le Mans starting grid were equipped with at least one component—including calipers, discs, and pads—made by a single manufacturer: Brembo. The glowing brakes are a result of high friction and high temperatures that start at 574˚ Fahrenheit (300˚ Celsius) and soar past the 1500˚ F (815˚ C) mark, and the components undergo extreme stress. Impressively, these systems are designed to endure through a whole race without changing a single element, despite Le Mans now being a 24-hour sprint race. (Mid-race brake changes were commonplace back when the cars were more fragile.)
