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RAYBESTOS® ADVANCE MATERIAL FOR THE JULY 4 CAMPING WORLD GRAND PRIX AT THE GLEN IZOD INDYCAR SERIES RACE AT WATKINS GLEN INTERNATIONAL.

Jimmy Vasser and David Brozozowski with KV Racing Technology comment on the importance of brakes on road and street courses like Watkins Glen.  The team uses Raybestos brakes in the IZOD IndyCar Series.

Vasser won the 1996 IndyCar Series championship with Chip Ganassi Racing.  He scored 10 wins, nine poles and claimed 33 podium finishes. Brozozowski is responsible for the daily operation of the team including the supervision of crew personnel and coordination between departments.

JIMMY VASSER, CO-OWNER, KV RACING TECHNOLOGY: WHAT DOES A DRIVER LOOK FOR IN BRAKES? “There are so many things because every driver has got specific characteristics that they like out of their car and their car under braking.  Myself, for instance, I was kind of a hard-braker, really hard on the pad so I like a very stiff pedal and a harder pad that I can really step on hard and the initial hit didn’t have too much bite or too much grip.  Every driver is a little bit different but I think confidence and reliability and repeatability is some of the most important things.”

IS BRAKE MANAGEMENT AN ISSUE? “Brake management comes into play, particular at some of the harder tracks on brakes like at Surfer’s Paradise for instance.  But we seem to have had an advantage being involved with Raybestos and we really haven’t had to do that so much as of recent.  Our pad wear has been fantastic, especially since Raybestos came with a tapered pad that really allowed us to work the brakes harder all race long.”

HOW IMPORTANT ARE BRAKES ON THE ROAD AND STREET COURSES? “In road and street racing they almost everything.  If you’re locking up the odd wheel going into a braking zone you’re losing the grip of the tire to the ground so while you want to have maximum stopping force, you don’t want to lock-up a wheel and lose the grip to the ground.  You can’t turn into the corner with the speeds that you have if the brakes aren’t working properly.  If the car won’t stop or if you’re locking wheels you can’t turn in the corner and roll speed then you’re never going to get the lap time.”

CAN BRAKES PROVIDE A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE? “There so few areas that you can exploit to try to gain the advantage.  Braking is one of those areas.  The cars are all the same, the engines are all the same, the tires are all the same but one of the areas that we can exploit is in braking.  The better you can mak e it obviously the faster you’re going to go.  When the grid is separated by one second, any tenth of a second or any hundredth you can gain is just invaluable.”

DAVID BRZOZOWSKI, TEAM MANAGER, KV RACING TECHNOLOGY: HOW IMPORTANT ARE BRAKES IN INDYCAR RACING? “Brakes are, I’m going to say like the shocks, I mean, they’re probably one of the most important things on a road circuit.  Braking is everything.  If brakes aren’t good, I don’t care who you are, you’re not going to be fast so brakes are a very important part of what we do.  I run all the Raybestos pads in my passenger car.  They should know that the relationship between racing does correlate to the real world.”

CAN BRAKES PROVIDE A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE? “I my opinion I think they are probably more important when you’re in a spec-type series.  They limit you on what you can actually do and you’ve got to think outside of the box and work within this area, this gray area, to find the advantages.  I think it’s very important.”

IS BRAKE MANAGEMENT AN ISSUE? “It can be an issue.  It’s not so much an issue with what we’re running right now which is the Raybestos pad.  Yes, it can be a big issue for sure depending on the circuit you run at.  The Raybestos product has been outstanding.&nbs p; We had a choice coming into this series running one pad or the other.  We chose to run the Raybestos pad based on our initial testing.  We found it to be superior.  We’ve carried down that path I think from some of the input that we’ve given the company they’ve been able to produce something even better yet again.  I consider it an advantage so that’s why we run it.”

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST COMMON DRIVER COMPLAINTS ABOUT BRAKES? “The two biggest complaints that I hear is bite, which is very important.  Some drivers like a pad which is very aggressive, some don’t like an aggressive pad.  Probably the si ngle biggest thing in these particular cars is what we call pad taper which makes the pedal go soft.  When the driver goes down into a corner at 200 miles per hour he wants the pedal to be there and if it goes moving a long way, they’re not very happy.”

HOW IMPORTANT ARE BRAKES AT ROAD AND STREET COURSE RACES? “Road and street course races, like I said before, brakes are everything.  It’s like your passenger car.  If the brakes don’t work you don’t have any security.  The driver doesn’t feel secure, have confidence, I don’t care what you do you’re not going to be fast so brakes are a very important part of what we do.”

HOW CONCERNED ARE YOU ABOUT KEEPING THE BRAKES COOL? “The cooling side on these brakes, that becomes I think where the stickling point comes in Indy car racing.  I think in my opinion where a lot of people miss the boat is that they automatically think that things have to be cool to work.  In the real world, that’s not the case.  Everything works around a certain temperature it wants to be at.  We’re more interesting in optimizing the temperature that makes the brakes work to their optimum.  We don’t concentrate on running things as cold as they can get.  We’re more interested in maintaining a particular number.  We particularly run the brakes hot.”

Raybestos® brand brake and chassis parts are produced by affiliated companies in Affinia’s Global Brake and Chassis Group, the leading manufacturer of braking systems and chassis parts in the transportation industry.  The brake line includes everything from brake drums to rotors, pads, shoes and hydraulic parts, while the chassis line features tie rods, ball points, idler arms and sway bar links.  Raybestos brand braking and chassis systems are also the only systems used by NASCAR’s Joe Gibbs Racing in competition.  For more information about Raybestos brakes, visit Raybestos.com.  For more information on Raybestos Chassis visit RaybestosChassis.com

Affinia Group Inc. is an innovative global leader in the design, manufacture, distribution and marketing of industrial grade products and services, including extensive offerings of aftermarket parts for automotive and heavy-duty vehicles. With more than $1.8 billion in annual revenue, Affinia has operations in North and South America, Europe, Asia and India. For more information, visit www.affiniagroup.com.

* Affinia Group Inc.’s affiliated companies include Brake Parts Inc. WIX Filtration Corp LLC, Affinia Products  Corp LLC and other high quality manufacturers of the Affinia family of brands.

- Camp & Associates, Inc., for Raybestos Brand Brakes, Press Release