CAMF New Energy Drift Hainan Challenge: Zeekr 007 Runs TTSPORT Brakes

The 2026 CAMF New Energy Vehicle Drift Hainan Challenge just wrapped as the world's first drift championship built entirely around electric cars — and the first national-level auto-moto event to run in Hainan since the free trade port's closure operations began. Every official car on track, a Zeekr 007, ran a full TTSPORT professional drift brake package.

A First for Drift Racing: Electric Cars Go Sideways

Drift has always rewarded cars that can hold a slide at high speed, snap through big-angle transitions, and string together pendulum turns without losing composure. Doing that on a fuel car is hard enough. Doing it on a battery-electric platform, where instant torque and extra curb weight change every input, is a different problem entirely.

The event mattered on two levels: it opened a new competitive category for electric performance cars, and it landed as a symbolic milestone for motorsport's broader shift toward electrification — traditional fuel-drift culture meeting high-output electric drivetrains on the same tarmac.

Below, some of the weekend's sideways action from the Hainan circuit.

Why Electric Drift Punishes Brakes Harder

Take away the exhaust note and an EV drift car still has to obey the same physics as a fuel car — it just hits the brakes with a heavier punch. An electric motor delivers full torque from zero RPM, so throttle response is more abrupt and the car carries more speed into transitions. Add the extra mass of a battery pack and you get more kinetic energy that the brakes alone have to absorb, corner after corner, without a break to cool down.

That combination pushes drift-spec braking hardware into territory fuel cars rarely see:

• Higher-frequency repeated braking through every transition
• Faster heat buildup across a full session
• Tighter control over drift angle and line correction
• Consistent front-to-rear brake balance under load
• Stability through sustained, back-to-back slides

The Official Car: Zeekr 007 on Full TTSPORT Brakes

The event's official car, the Zeekr 007, was the star of the weekend. Its high-performance electric drivetrain gives it sharp, sustained power delivery — exactly what makes it fun to watch in a drift. But holding that power together through a full run comes down to the brakes, and every official car in the field ran the same setup: TTSPORT's professional drift brake package as factory-standard equipment for the event.

Front Axle: TTSPORT DR6 Six-Piston Calipers

The front axle does most of the work in a drift car: it manages weight transfer into the corner, sets entry angle, and holds the slide once it starts. That means the front brakes need strong, consistent bite, stable performance as temperatures climb, and a pedal that gives the driver clear feedback for making mid-slide corrections.

The DR6 six-piston front caliper is built for exactly that brief — enough clamping force and rigidity to hold up through repeated hard stops, without the fade or wandering pedal feel that shows up when a caliper starts to flex or the fluid gets too hot.

Rear Axle: TTSPORT's First Triple-Caliper Drift Setup

The bigger technical story of the weekend was on the rear axle, where TTSPORT ran a triple-caliper layout for the first time: a TT8611 dual-caliper system paired with an EPB electronic parking brake.

Why EV drift needs a third caliper

Fuel-drift cars have long relied on a hydraulic handbrake working alongside the rear service brake — a well-proven layout. Electric platforms complicate that setup in a few specific ways:

• Electronic parking brakes are more tightly integrated into the car's electrical architecture
• Rear-axle packaging is tighter around the motor and battery structure
• Regenerative braking logic intervenes in how the car slows
• Electronic control systems are more deeply coupled to the drivetrain

A conventional drift handbrake conversion doesn't bolt on cleanly under those constraints. TTSPORT's answer was to keep the TT8611 dual-caliper drift brake and the EPB electronic parking function separate but working together, which:

• Keeps drift-brake and parking functions independent of each other
• Preserves the car's original electronic parking function
• Holds up to sustained, high-intensity professional drift use
• Speeds up rear-wheel lock response
• Improves stability through continuous slides
• Sharpens control over the car's drift attitude

What This Means for Electric Motorsport

The bigger takeaway from Hainan isn't just that an electric car can drift. It's that electric competition can be just as raw, precise, and demanding as anything running on gas — and that the hardware to support it at a professional level already exists.

Against the backdrop of China's push toward carbon goals and a global shift toward electrified performance, this event is one marker of where the sport is headed. TTSPORT is using professional competition like this as a proving ground to push braking technology for EVs forward, refine drift-specific systems, and eventually bring race-proven parts to more electric performance owners.