Red Bull Stunt Motorcyclist Has Rear Brakes Straight Off a Drift Car

Ever since I first saw Jason Britton back in the day, I couldn't help but be enthralled by stunt motorcyclists' capabilities on their motorcycles. And that love found me watching the Drift Battles between Nick 'Apex' Brocha and Ernie Vigil for Icon Motorsports, as well as Red Bull's Aaron Colton, who I recently got to meet at MotoGP.

Apart from being an extremely easy dude to talk to—I need him to do a stunt school for me—he walked me through the intricacies of the stunt Triumph he's built over the years. While the whole thing is a sick piece of engineering, one customization in particular blew my mind but also made a ton of sense as Aaron explained it. That was his rear brake setup which seems straight out of Formula Drift.

You see, Formula D folks use twin rear brake caliper setups so that they have a secondary caliper for their hydraulic handbrakes. This allows them to initiate a corner by locking up the rear wheels only, which wouldn't be possible if that handle was connected to the full braking system. You'd end up locking both fronts and rears and head straight into a wall.

And Aaron has essentially the same setup, with twin brake calipers at the rear, as one is connected to the normal foot brake lever, while the other connects to a handlebar-mounted one. But while he can use the system to initiate drifts just like Formula D, what he more commonly uses it for—at least the hand controls part—is controlling his stuntified wheelies, i.e. when he doesn't have a foot near the pegs. 

Stunt folks are known for their wild wheelies that we mere mortals would never even think to try, including those when their feet are over the bars, to the side of the tank, or one leg out of the bars, the other to the side. But that leaves them unable to use the rear brake to control the angle and length of a wheelie, along without the use of it if something were to go wrong.

Aaron's bike and its twin rear calipers, however, solve that by introducing a handlebar-mounted lever he can control just like his normal front brake control. It gives him the ability to control whatever wheelie he wants to try with his hands, which rarely leave the bars—that is unless he's surfing down COTA's hill.

Aaron does use it to initiate drifts, though, too, and it's something I've come to love on EV motorcycles, as I think I have way more control of a bike's rotation compared to the peg-mounted controls. Aaron and I talked about this and he fully agreed with the assessment. He has more finite control through his fingers compared to a booted-up foot. And even a lot of MotoGP riders now have some form of hand control for their rear brakes. 

The setup truly blew my mind, as I just didn't think about not having access to your foot while doing a stunt wheelie. And my conversation with Aaron kept bringing me to the conclusion that I'd love to see more motorcycles with hand controls for their rear brakes, but it does beg the question of where you'd put the clutch and whether or not you'd forget which is which on modern ICE bikes. Less so for EVs, though.