Some quick background and eye candy recently released from AP Racing.

Not everyone knows AP Racing, and usually think of them as just another player in the brake game.? But, there is a little more under the covers to this.

No braking company has more panache all-around in the highest ranks of racing than AP Racing, not even Brembo. The Brembo Group purchased AP Racing (formerly Lockheed/AP founded in 1919) in 1999, yet each still operate separately today. Brembo’s headquarters are in Italy and AP is in England.

Both compete against each other in nearly all global racing series, with some mildly applied rules for OE accounts. Brembo is better equipped to handle the larger production runs (like Porsche, Mercedes, Nissan, Hyundai, Ford, GM, etc.) with factories in many countries, while AP Racing is often better suited for more specialized, short-run manufacturers (Bugatti, McLaren, Koenigsegg, Lotus, Pagani, Spyker, GTA, etc.). As always, there are exceptions to this paradigm, often due to long established technical or business relationships.

All that said, Brembo has a much, much, much stronger marketing department, getting most of their OE accounts to run their name on the caliper faces. Hardly any AP Racing OE accounts openly advertise they use AP equipment, but it can be found out by looking a bit or reading a vehicle’s technical specs. AP is basically a big building full of engineers who spend more time designing, tooling, purchasing, etc., with just one “marketing engineer” tasked to get the word out (in typically subtle British fashion) as well as update the catalog, tech sheets and the web site. No contest there!

Also, AP Racing is considered by most to the the leader in racing high-performance clutch technology, an area where Brembo is not involved at all.”? Here are some pics recently collected and released by AP Racing to show their involvement.? Enjoy.