Brake pads OEM BMW or Hawk Performance

Hawk HP 5.0 was a decent enough upgrade for my tuned S5 and still perfectly fine for street use for my first few track days.

HAWK HPS 5.0 on mine currently - no complaints. Keeps the Linear pedal feel (doesnt bite hard in the beginning then dies out if that makes sense) and stops much better than the OEMs. It does dust a bit but nothing crazy.

my strategy when I started to run into a similar type of problem (brake pads disintegrating and eating my budget) was to go to endurance race pads - for me the Hawk ER1 pads seem to be working well.

It has new brakes, oil pan gasket, VCG, new radiator, hoses, fan, fan clutch, water pump and a few other things I’m forgetting.

I use Hawk Blue pads, they brake great and don't wear out.

I recently put Hawk Performance Ceramics (yellow box) on my FL5 for daily driving to combat the insane amount of brake dust that OEM pads have. So far they feel really good! They seem to have an initial bite that is a little more aggressive than the OEM pads, but still have good modulation. FWIW I live in the south and I haven't yet driven them in cold temps. I've read that ceramics can have a weaker initial bite when temps are near freezing but I haven't had a chance to evaluate that.

I recently switched to DTC-60 for my first full on race pad. Worked fine for my turbo car except my calipers got crazy hot.

OEM BMW Performance. Can’t recommend the brake pads though, dusty as hell. I had Hawk HPS5.0 pads before, those performed better than the OE pads with the added bonus of being very low dust.

after about halfway through the second session I began to feel a fluttering under hard braking. Some light shaking of the steering wheel. No noticeable pulling left or right. No noticeable brake fade.

Fast forward to the next day. I noticed this black gunk on my front pads. The rears look good as new.

Under normal conditions my Hawk-30 pads squeak. Now I am noticing a rhythmic squeaking when I brake at street speeds.

The steering was the worst of all the cars I tried. Engine was fabulous but transmission not very responsive. Handling and suspension usability range were solid but the killer for this car was the really soft, weak brakes.