Time for a brake job and I was looking at some Hawk pads. I have new OEM blanks for the rotors and someone was telling me its not good to run Hawk pads with them because there isnt enough cooling. So should I go with different pads or just get some slotted/drilled rotors that can handle the Hawks?

 

Those pads should work fine with the stock rotors.

 

Slotted drilled rotors are for looks on a street car.

 

^Yes, but they extend the life of pads since there's less heat generated and more air cooling on the pad itself. Infact, this is often, but not always used in Formula 1 (depends on the driver and circuit for example always used in Monza because of the 200mph Rettifilio Tribune straight). In addition, aftermarket rotors have bigger slots on the inside than factory ones. I've been running Hawk pads on mine for 6.5 years now, and I use my brakes a lot! Call it a miracle, but this is the current condition of them:







You can still see the slanted edges, indicating low wear.



In general, there's less stopping power compared to when I had stock rotors, but given these results, I really don't care! You should be just fine with Hawk pads on stock rotors. My favorite pad is Axxis from Australia. Aftermarket rotor is just for those picky guys like me that want things to perform efficiently.