As for disk brakes versus drum brakes; Drum brakes fade because as the drum gets hot it expands and the shoe no longer has full contact. When is the last time you saw drum brakes at the Indy 500? Or on a NASCAR racecar? Probably the 60's for Indy and the 70's for NASCAR.
I must disagree. Drum brakes also went away after getting wet from fording a stream and you had almost no brakes until they dried. Drum expansion had nothing to do with this.
It’s the self actuation built into drum brake designs that was the problem. As the coefficient of friction reduced from getting wet or from overheating, the self actuation also went away compounding the effect. Less friction plus less pressure on the brake drum due to lower self actuation and it’s like the brakes completely went away.
Disk brakes fade too, but the reduction in braking is only proportional to the loss of friction and not compounded by the loss of self actuation.
Some race cars in the drum brake era had double trailing shoes instead of a leading and a trailing shoe. There is no self actuation in such a design and thus it needed a lot of pedal pressure or power assist to be usable, however, it worked the same hot or cold and the braking force was very linear and predictable.
Years ago, a friend had a problem with the car that he just put brand new brake shoes in, one front wheel would lock up and the other didn’t seem to brake at all. We pulled the drums off and it turned out he put both leading shoes on one wheel and both trailing shoes on the other wheel.