I'm sure if you are reading this article you have experienced the dreaded ICE pedal at least once in your racing life. Outside of losing your brakes all together it's about one of the worst and most scary things you will experience while driving!
Today, I want to cover what causes ICE pedal, what to do when it happens, and how you can potentially avoid it. Before we get into that let's first cover what ICE pedal feels like for those of us lucky enough not to have experienced this.
What does ICE pedal feel like on the race track?
If you aren't sure if you have had an ICE pedal before or not that means you have not. When this happens you have no doubt at what you just felt. When you get an ICE pedal the brake pedal itself feels like a rock, no matter how hard you push the pedal down it will not budge. The brake pedal is essentially locked in the in a high position.
At the same time you are pushing the brakes as hard as you can the car is only slowing down at maybe 10% - 20% at the rate you were expecting it to and no matter how hard you press the car just won't slow down any faster. It's seriously scary stuff!
What causes ICE pedal
I want to give a shoutout to a Chin Track Days Instructor, Art Meltzer for this excellent breakdown on the cause of ICE pedal. The TLDR of the root cause is:
"there are combinations of wheel speed and wheel deceleration data that can fool the ABS computer into determining that there is significant wheel slip when in reality there is none." - Art Meltzer
It's the computer system of your car getting confused at the data coming in and it just freaks out. You will almost only ever get an ICE pedal in threshold braking corners where you really need to attack the brakes.
What do I do when I get an ICE pedal?
I don't have a lot of good news for you here... There is only one thing you can do to get rid of the ice pedal and when you have that survival instinct kick in when the car is just not slowing down it's going to be the very last thing you want to do. The only way to essentially "reset" the brakes and get them to work normal again is to release all the way off the brakes and reapply them.
Yep, you read that right. When you get the ice pedal you will need to release completely off the brakes and then hit them again. This is going to be nearly impossible to do and it's surely not a good thing to do but according to Bosch engineers its the only thing you can do.
How can I avoid ICE pedal?
From my experience I've only found one super small nuanced change that seems to limit how often ICE pedal happens - I'm only speaking from experience on this and I have not had an engineer explain why I feel this to be true, so take it with a grain of salt.
ICE pedal seems to be more likely to happen when you are too quick in ramping up to peak brake pressure in a threshold braking corner. We have all been taught we need to hit the brakes hard initially, but that is often more true in proper race cars with proper braking systems. In production based cars I find it more helpful to squeeze my way to up to peak brake pressure. Please note, this is a very subtle difference! I still work my way to peak brake pressure quickly and it still comes very early in the brake zone. I'm just slightly smoother and slower working up to it.
