The MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship are raring to take on the Aragon Round as they charge into the midway point of their 2026 season. The riders travel to Sunny Alcaniz, Spain, for their first of two rounds in the country. MotorLand Aragon’s 5.077 km layout is categorized by Brembo braking engineers ‘highly demanding’, earning a four out of five in their braking difficulty index used to denote the strain on the Brembo brake pads used by 13 of the 14 teams in WorldSBK.

KEY AREAS OF THE TRACK

In total, riders use the brakes 11 times for a total of 29 seconds of braking, and to Brembo engineers, the hardest among them are Turns 11 and 12, after exiting a critical area lovingly dubbed “The Corkscrew”. Riders exit Turn 9 onto a gently bending Turn 10, opening the throttle as they bank their bikes to the left before clamping down hard into Turn 12-13’s chicane.

This area of tarmac and the subsequent Turn 14-15 chicane is Italian rider Axel Bassani's (bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team) favourite, on it he said: “The best part of the track are the two corners under the big wall, or the ‘Corkscrew section, where you go into the slow corners. This is a very difficult part of the circuit, but at the same time, it’s fun.”

After another chicane on Turns 14-15, riders open the throttle down the longest straight of the track into the final sector. Their bikes go from 317 km/h down to 142 km/h in just 3.8 seconds, covering 232 meters while riders apply a load of 5.6 kg of pressure on the brake lever, pressurising the brake fluid up to 12 bar, or similar to the pressure exerted at 110 meters underwater, one of the highest figures in the Championship. To the riders, Turn 16-17 is a long, nearly parabolic double apex left-hander, exiting slightly before rounding a full 180 degrees. The exit here is critical as it is the final corner of a lap, making carrying speed vital for a prospective run to the line.

BRAKE FLUID OPTIONS

Braking isn’t just a matter of precise timing by the rider or the team’s choices regarding the size of their brake pads; In addition to calipers, discs, pads, brake pumps, and clutch pumps, Brembo also supplies almost all Superbike riders with brake fluid. Most opt for HTC64, which is characterised by greater resistance to high ambient temperatures but lower hygroscopicity. The latter term refers to the ability to absorb water (humidity) present in the atmosphere.

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