Royal Drift Series Shanghai: TTSPORT Brakes Power the Podium

From June 4 to 7, the opening round of the Royal Drift Series ran at Shanghai's Tianma Circuit, and over half the professional field lined up with TTSPORT brakes on all four corners.

The Highest-Stakes Drift Series Lands in Shanghai

Royal Drift Series bills itself as the drift world's biggest purse right now, and the entry list backed that up — top domestic and international pro drivers, all fighting for the same podium spots at Shanghai's Tianma Circuit.

At this level, chassis and brake consistency decide who makes the podium and who doesn't. In back-to-back tandem chase runs with constant weight transfer, any fade, sponginess, or flex in the brake pedal shows up immediately in the result.

The Braking Angle: DR6 Up Front, DR4+2 Out Back

Most of the pro cars at Tianma ran the same TTSPORT setup: the DR6 six-piston caliper up front, and the DR4+2 dual-circuit integrated six-piston caliper on the rear. That rear caliper is the more interesting piece — it's a structural fix for a problem that's dogged drift builds for years.

The DR6 handles front braking duty — six pistons, built for the repeated hard stops that set up every entry into a tandem run.

The rear DR4+2 folds two separate hydraulic circuits into a single caliper body — one circuit for the service brake, one dedicated to handbrake lockup.

The old way of doing this: two rear calipers per corner, one for regular braking and a second, smaller unit just for the mechanical handbrake lock. It works, but it's heavy, it demands thick discs, it piles on unsprung mass, and the extra caliper flexes under load. Drivers also end up fighting a handbrake lever that needs serious grip strength — over a long event that fatigues hands fast, and a tired pull often means a soft, half-hearted lockup right when you need a clean one.

The traditional twin-caliper rear layout — two full units doing the work of one, at the cost of weight and rigidity.

Two hydraulic circuits, one housing — installed, it looks like a standard rear caliper but does the job of two.

The handbrake feel changes the most — a light pull now gets a strong, clean lockup instead of the heavy, vague pull drivers had to muscle through before. Less hand fatigue over a long event means more consistent drift angle deep into the day.

Put the DR6 front and DR4+2 rear together and you get a package built specifically around drift's demands: consistency under repeated hard stops, low unsprung weight, and a caliper structure that holds its shape when it's hot.

That's the margin a zero-tolerance, high-purse event demands — no room for a soft pedal or a slow tandem entry.

Teams Running the Full TTSPORT Setup

Eight of the round's teams ran the full DR6 front / DR4+2 rear package at Tianma:

Zero KM Lubricants ZM Drift Team

Drivers Zhang Shengjun, Li Songyang, and Jiang Zhishe.

Zero KM Lubricants & Nuoyu GOLD CORE Drift Team

Drivers Lan Shikai and Jylhä Jarkko.

DRS Drift Team

Drivers Wang Qi, Li Jianghai, Chen Zhilong, and Shalva Adzhiashvili.

Leiden 441 B.W. UPDRIFT Drift Team

Drivers Ye Zhicheng and Sheng Jiacheng.

Shanghai APEX Drift Team

Drivers Zhu Yuanlu, Gan Bin, Xia Changhao, and Pei Fan.

DKS Drift Team

Drivers Lin Gaoyuan and Gao Shanbo.

Xihu Tire OPS Drift Team

Drivers Qian Hongshen and Lu Xiao.

Shanghai Chezhen Drift Team

Drivers Tong Ling and Jiang Hanwen.

Podium Result: Wang Qi Takes Third in Tandem

Against a stacked field, DRS driver Wang Qi ran the full DR6 + DR4+2 package and finished third in the tandem chase battle — a result that came down to holding a consistent car through every run, corner after corner.

What's Next for TTSPORT in Drift

A top-purse, top-field event like this is a real stress test. Over half the professional teams at Tianma ran TTSPORT brakes all weekend without a single failure, and one of them walked away with a podium finish. TTSPORT plans to keep building out its drift-specific lineup as the series continues.