So our MCSa went in for some work and the dealer wound up replacing the front brakes (pads and rotors) which were pretty low at 28k miles. Gotta love that maintenance program (sometimes).

I had been planning on changing pads for a while now as I wasn't happy with the dusting the OEM brakes provided. I was satisfied overall with the brakes but the dust was annoying to clean especially the nooks and crannies of the Xlite wheels.

Desired traits on the brake pads were:
- less dust
- good initial bite
- no noise
- good overall braking feel
- good performance for day to day and aggressive street driving

I was torn between the Hawk Ceramics and the PBR Ceramics (Ultimates) that I got and the deciding factor became availability. The local race supply shop (c2racers.net) could get them in next day. I had previously used the PBR / Axxis Ultimates on my RX7 on street and autocross. I used them once on a test day at Buttonwillow and they were OK. I could definitely over power them if I wasn't careful but that is a different car with much more power than the Mini. I had thought about the HPS but given the Mini is just a street car it wasn't worth it. Alex at Tire Rack had also suggested the Ceramics instead for my use.

Been using them for a week now and so far I am happy with them. They met all the attributes I wanted and offer good performance and at good price (cheaper than the Hawks fwiw).

We'll see how the dust plays out as they haven't been on the car long enough. Hopefully it is similar to the RX7.