Developing TRP's All-New DH-R EVO Brake with Gwin, Klein, and Cometti

The TRP R&D team found some small parts in the DH-R system that could be tweaked, and they caused a radical change.

“Our professional racers have always been open minded – they have no fear of change, they are expecting it.” - TRP

Back in the summer of 2018, as riders were starting to race primarily on 29-inch wheels, TRP athlete Neko Mulally caught wind of a special E-MTB disc brake project boasting 223 mm, large 2.3 mm thick rotors. Soon after his testing’s, Aaron Gwin was racing those E-MTB brakes with bigger and stronger rotors at the World Championships in Lenzerheide, Switzerland.

This video tells the story of how the TRP R&D team came upon the changes made to the previous DH-R system to tailor it to the needs of new E-MTB bikes, how open-minded downhill racers embraced this opportunity and how one season of creative race development made a lasting difference.

Spanning the 2018 and 2019 race seasons, bikes evolved with larger 29-inch wheels, new frame designs and new suspension kinematics allowing riders to push the limits of speed further than ever before. All the sudden, good brakes were not good enough.

By 2019, all major TRP sponsored downhill teams were racing on the 223/2.3 mm thick rotors and our G-Spec DH-R Brakes. Higher speeds and more traction opened up room for improvement. TRP R&D teams traveled to many races, listened to riders and their mechanics feedback, and quickly adapted the brake to match the new standard of World Cup racing.

No stone was left untouched. What started with bigger and stronger 223/2.3 mm rotors, led to a completely re-designed brake system at the end of the 2019 season: the all new DH-R EVO.

New ergonomic lever-blade, newly formulated brake pad compounds, new high-performance hydraulic oil, new 5 mm brake hose-system, newly designed and CNC-machined adapters, new selection of 2.3 rotors, newly designed oil flow inside the calipers, new hydraulic leverage ratio, and a smaller size master cylinder piston lift the overall performance of the DH-R EVO to this new standard of racing.

Check out Arron Gwin, Bruce Klein and Luca Cometti taking E-MTBs to the “no brake challenge.”

“When it comes to braking, I have always wanted performance over everything. I do not care about weight, I just want my brakes to have the absolute best power, feel, and consistency that we can get. The bigger wheels on the 29er downhill bike now make them even harder to slow down. We’ve got a brake now that is extremely powerful while maintaining the feel and modulation that make them easy to control.”

Learn more about the new brakes at TRP.