About reentry heat exposure

[Gaarst]

So after blowing up a few shuttles, I was testing AIRBRAKES to slow my craft down for reentry and avoid overheating of the rest of the parts.

(BTW: AIRBRAKES work great in preventing deadly reentries)

Then I noticed something strange during reentry.

As you can see in the image below, the AIRBRAKES are doing fine even when fully exposed to hypersonic airflow but for some reason, the two AV-R8 winglets at the back started to slightly overheat even though only their edge is exposed.

As both parts have max temperatures of 2000K, this means that the winglets are getting hotter than the airbrakes.

I was wondering if this was something normal in real life / in KSP, and what could cause this in the game.

Any opinions / explanations ?

[Kuu Lightwing]

Maybe airbrakes heat up and transfer heat to other parts?

EDIT: Sorry, didn't notice part about heat tolerance.

[DoToH]

Airbrakes are attached to a bigger part (more thermal mass) than R8's are, so they are transfering their heat better???

[zekes]

AV-R8s have horrible thermal weight - that means it doesn't take much to heat them up. In contrast the Airbrakes are much heavier and so can absorb more. However, this full deflection should be heating them much more than it is...

[Tarheel1999]

Radially attached parts cannot be shielded from aero effects (only parts attached to nodes are occluded/shielded). Not sure how aero and thermal interact but this could be part of the reason in addition to the mass differences.