For more than twenty years, CEROBEAR is an established supplier of high performance, highly customized hybrid bearings for top applications in race cars including: gearboxes and transmissions, wheels, motor generator units, turbo chargers, chassis, engines, clutches and many more applications.

CEROBEAR serves all kinds of players in the worldwide racing market from the top teams of Formula 1, World Rallye Car, NASCAR, Le Mans Prototypes and GT cars, Daytona Prototypes to the DTM. Also motorcycle applications are a growing market segment for CEROBEAR.

With its customized hybrid bearing solutions, CEROBEAR serves its motorsport customers by supplying high performance bearings in the shortest possible delivery times, generally 12-16 weeks, in urgent cases in down to 4 weeks.

With its continuous drive for innovation, CEROBEAR uses advanced materials and components and works very closely with its customers to deliver bearings with maximized performance and reliability. Its ability to custom engineer and manufacture all kinds of bearing features in extremely short delivery times makes CEROBEAR the perfect development partner.

CEROBEAR´s ceramic bearing technology guarantees:

• low friction
• significant weight savings
• high temperature resistance
• high speed & superior load capability
• minimum lubrication needs
• highest reliability

The wheel bearings of modern, high-performance race cars are normally paired, axially-preloaded hybrid angular contact ball bearings with integrated low friction seals. The main requirements are maximum stiffness for a reduced and uniform brake and tire wear, low weight to reduce the unsprung masses, minimum friction and maximum reliability.

CEROBEAR hybrid wheel bearings offer optimum performance through an individual bearing design and ideal combination of materials. The best results are achieved by using silicon nitride and high-nitrogen steels as rolling contact partners, whereas modern, high-performance plastics are ideal materials for the cages and seals.

Designs with a high contact angle and tight raceway curvatures are nowadays dominating, since they achieve a very precise and extremely stiff brake disc and tire guidance for the most demanding load case, which is fast cornering. At the same time, an increase in the axial bearing load capacity and widening of the virtual bearing distance allows a smaller bearing size to be used for maximum weight saving.

Race car transmissions, especially in Formula 1, are subject to permanent developments. For this reason, bearing application, available space and load spectrum continuously changes.
Since more than 20 years CEROBEAR adapts its hybrid bearings to the changing boundary conditions in transmissions to reach a minimum of mass moment of inertia, required space and friction and simultaneously address the changing requirements concerning life-span and reliability.
These challenges are addressed by:

• selection of the most suitable bearing type, e.g. combination of exempted four-point bearing and cylindrical roller bearing, spherical roller bearings and other
• stress-related optimization of roller dimensions and crowning
• high level of integrated functions, e.g. customized flanges, anti-rotation devices, threads, splines or oil feeds for an optiomum connection to the surrounding structure.

The performance enhancing elements, e.g. MGU-H, MGU-K and turbo charger, which are introduced in the Formula-1 and LMP-race car segment several years ago, make high demands on bearing solutions due to the high rotational speed, high acceleration rates and high temperatures.

CEROBEAR develops hybrid bearing solutions, which are especially optimized for these applications. A careful selection and optimization of osculation, bearing play, cage material, geometry and coating, CEROBEAR bearings are designed to deliver the highest possible value for the customer.

Core topic of the race car chassis segment (e.g. damper bearings, rocker bearings, steering bearings) is the optimization of stiffness and friction.

Therefore, the suitable selection of bearing types and the optimization of dimensions and inner geometry for the specific load cases are essential.

Related to the direction of the loads and the required load capabilities, CEROBEAR designs axial angular contact ball bearings, cylindrical roller bearings or spherical roller bearings.