Brake pads Ferodo or OEM Mazda

My 2011 2.5 has 220,000 miles on it and it is the most reliable car I’ve owned yet. I bought it used with 45k miles and I have only replaced the tires once, the brake pads once, one engine mount, all belts including timing, and that’s pretty much it. The transmission still shifts pretty smoothly.

Ferodo DS2500 paired with Zimmerman blank rotors and Motul RBF600 is what I use. The tracks I go to are more technical and not fast so it's great for my use case. I imagine if I went to a track where speeds are above 150Km/H and have long, fast corners, I would need better pads. I'm considered intermediate to advanced and last ran a 1:47 at CTMP DDT with worn Vitour Tempesta Enzo tires. I think I can run low 40s this year. I would not track with stock pads. I overheated my pads and brake fade hit hard. The pads melted and I went off the track and almost over the hill at TMP (Cayuga).

I took apart my fronts on my 2016 Mazda at 50k and was surprised that they were still at 50%.

I used DS2500 for my first 2 track days but outgrew them rather quickly on a 2800 lb car. Last time I swapped to DS1.11 and felt much more confident braking deeper into corners with zero fade at my intermediate level. Now I just use DS2500 for the street and canyons.

I got Mazda 2 2013 and just had a replacement for both front brake pads and discs - $330 for the parts. $120 for labour.

if you want raw stopping power then Ferodo DS2500's are great.

I was a huge fan of Ferodo DS2500s on Centric rotors. They performed insanely well for street duty and were decent enough for track days.

I switched to the Ferodo DSUno. I am satisfied with its performance, but they seem to struggle because of something. Today, after the track day on Saturday, I checked it and found a crack and a gnawed edge. Also, they have uneven wear, about 0.5-1mm difference. The differences are between the top and bottom parts of the pads, front and back parts and on different sides of the same rotor (inner and outer pads). Uneven wear was with the old pads as well. Recently, I installed brake air ducts, and after going out from the track, the temperature was, in the worst case, 480C degree, which looks fine for these pads. In total, I drove for about 3 hours on tracks, one on a wet track (so no hard braking) and two moderately/hard(8-9/10) braking. The brake rotors are also new, Zimmermann blank, installed with pads. The initial thickness of the pads is 16.4mm (with the plate, the plate is 5.5mm, so the "pure" pad is about 11mm) Currently, I have eaten about 4.5-5mm of the pads in 3 hours of tracking.

Recently completed my HPDE and by the end of the day my stock pads were completely gone. Got my front rotors and all my pads replaced soon after that. I went for the Ferodo DS2500 pads. While bedding my pads, I noticed the brake feeling/bite is quite nice when braking at around 50-60% pressure, but once I tried emulating track style braking (i.e hitting brake pedal very hard) I noticed that my brake pedal was vibrating/rattling and also felt some sort of scraping was going on. This would happen even when hitting brakes hard from low speeds of ~30 mph. It's felt entirely on the front brakes. ABS did not engage, so I don't think the vibrations are from that. The obvious visible difference I see is the use of high temp brake lube from the shop.

My rear pads cracked after 3 months, 4k km of use.