Just can't let this one past - soft brake pedal, so blame the pads?

I like EVO mag. It's readable. It's not necessarily focused on sustainable motoring - in fact all forms of 'motoring', be they EV, diesel or petrol, are arguably unsustainable. It's really about harm-minimisation.

That said, I have to question rev-heads who throw a road car onto a track, find the brakes inadequate and blame the pads. After just one warm-up lap it's hard to imagine overheated pads, or rotors, or even boiling brake fluid; but of all those options I'd pick the brake fluid over pads. Soft, mushy pedal? That's extra play in the hydraulics as the fluid boils. Hard pedal that fails to slow progress, that's a pad with a layer of superheated material on top, between pad and rotor, causing the braking equivalent of skating on ice. To me it suggests old fluid, or just lousy standard brakes. They aren't designed for race tracks after all.  

Project Veyrog: Audi TT | Trackday features | evo

"With John Barker alongside in the Audi’s passenger seat, we completed an easy out-lap to warm everything through. But approaching the first corner proper – Hangar Hairpin, which requires some serious slowing from fourth gear down to second – we discovered that the old, worn, poor quality pads were already too hot, causing the pedal to go mushy underfoot and the TT to shed speed only gently, rather than in the major hurry I was asking for."