Cavendish on Hydraulic Rim Brakes?

Cavendish on Hydraulic Rim Brakes?

July 2013

Mark Cavendish started the 100th Tour de France in Corsica on the new SRAM RED Hydraulic Road Rim (HRR) brakes but despite claiming that they helped him avoid going down in the stage 1 crash just a few kilometers before the finish, Cav was back on normal brakes by stage 3.

He did use the brakes on stage 2 but, despite requesting to race on the SRAM HydroR platform for the 2013 Tour de France, Cav seems to have dropped the system for the 3rd stage.

SRAM described Cav’s use of the HRR system as a ‘BlackBox initiative’ and the hydraulic brakes were integrated into the usual SRAM Red ten-speed drivetrain rather than the new SRAM Red 22 groupset which has not been used by any of the teams as of yet.

©BrakeThrough Media

It’ll be interesting to see if Cav or any of the other SRAM sponsored riders use the HRR brake system later in the race. Short of disc brakes for road bikes being ratified by the UCI for 2014, the SRAM HRR system is a pretty exciting development for us roadies. We hope that Cav gets back on the system again before the end of the race, though we are especially keen to see if anyone uses the brakes in the mountains and what they have to report back about their performance in that most demanding of environments.

Here’s a video from GCN detailing the brakes:

SRAM Website