We first spotted the iconic red brakes on Specialized Gravity team race bikes last summer, but now Brembo is poised to offer their Gr-Pro mountain bike brake sets to the general public. Promising maximal power, easy-to-access modulation, and unparalleled control… could these highly adjustable Brembo brakes set a new mountain bike performance benchmark?
We had the chance to get some back-to-back test rides on the new brakes earlier this year, and can safely say that they offer some of the most accessible brake tuning we’ve ever used. With 3 distinct adjustments at the lever, you can truly change how the brakes perform & feel with ease. Does that mean you will dial in your braking for varying conditions, or just that you can independently adjust power & modulation to what feels best for you?
Brembo GR-PRO gravity mountain bike disc brakes
Brembo calls their race-proven GR-PRO disc brakes, a “complete high-performance braking ecosystem engineered for modern mountain bikes”. With that said, so far they’ve spent almost all of their development and fine-tuning on two types of riding – elite-level DH racing and enduro-style eMTB riding. Both are heavy bikes and high speeds, where you need maximum power to bring the bike to a stop. But just as important is adjustable modulation to control all that power.
And this is where the new Brembo MTB brakes look to stand out. With more power, modulation, fit & feel adjustability than pretty much all mainstream mountain bike brakes, Brembo hopes to bring more manageable braking power to the masses.
“Directly derived from Brembo’s racing applications, GR-PRO leverages the company’s experience in the UCI Downhill Mountain Bike World Cup, where Brembo products are already in use at the highest competitive level. This heritage ensures that the same principles of reliability, control, stability and consistency developed for elite competition are transferred into a system designed for aggressive mountain riding. These characteristics also make GR-PRO particularly suitable for today’s eMTBs and gravity bikes, which demand higher braking power and greater thermal robustness due to increased mass and higher average speeds.”
First Riding Impressions
The best way to test new brakes is repeatable laps on a known track, so I hit some of our favorite home-away-from-home trails outside Massa Marittima back in February with Bike Connection Agency. My time was limited to a single afternoon, but I really wanted to get a sense for the adjustability of the new Brembo brakes. So, I stuck to one variable – the 3-position lever ratio. And thankfully, I had an Amflow eMTB on hand with the powerful Avinox motor and a killer Öhlins suspension setup that let me quickly fly down a rough techy trail, then zip back up the hill for repeats.
Back-to-back leverage ratio tweaks
I started with the same medium setting front & rear to get a baseline, then tried soft/soft, medium/medium, then hard/hard to get a sense of the changes. Immediately, switching to soft I realized how big a shift it was and how I didn’t like the sensation at all, feeling like the braking power I wanted simply wasn’t there. Back in medium felt better. Then, in hard, it was again too stiff, feeling like I was going to tire my hands out in just over 1km of quick descending. So, next I figured I needed to mix-and-match a bit.
I tried hard front & medium rear, realizing that maybe hard would really be good when there was a lot of grip. Next, I swapped to medium front & soft rear, and got the same sense that maybe the soft setting could be nice in wet, loamy, or simply loose conditions. I still felt like medium/medium was my ideal feel. But when I looked back at my lap times, I’d actually set a personal best, shaving almost 5 seconds off a 3.5-minute descent in the medium/soft setting.
Without even getting into the dead-stroke adjustment (which is where I would really want to spend more time fine-tuning), my clear takeaway is that the Brembo Gr-Pro brakes will be perfect for mountain bikes who love to tinker with their perfect setup. These brakes harness tons of potential for anyone looking to fine-tune their setup, or adjust it as conditions change, to get more speed out of your bike.
I look forward to getting my hands on a set for long-term testing to see how far down the rabbit hole I can go!
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Tech details
- big red brakes… honestly, the first thing you notice is their color
- 2-piece forged alloy 4-piston calipers with 18mm insulated pistons
- 1-piece forged alloy master cylinder body with high lever force into a small diameter piston
- 3 independent adjustments at the lever:
‣ 3 levels of lever ratio/modulation adjustment: soft, medium & hard
‣ 7 clicks of dead stroke adjustment to fine-tune ideal braking point setting
‣ 40 clicks of tool-free reach adjustment positions to fit any hand size or preferred lever position - very long 65mm aluminum brake levers
- braided stainless steel brake lines with PTFE core
- 2.3mm thick stainless rotors, inspired by motorcycle rotors with trailing-spoke legs (the opposite orientation of most MTB brakes)
- rotors available in 200 & 220mm diameters, separately
- one specially-formulated semi-metallic brake pad compound, which already won 3 DH World Cups
- direct MatchMaker shifter/remote mounts, available separately
Brembo Gr-Pro MTB brakes – Pricing, options & availability
For now, the new Brembo Gr-Pro mountain bike brakes will be available just as a complete brake kit without rotors, retailing for approximately 900€, with VAT. But that does interestingly include a second set of brake pads, in addition to 2 levers, 2 calipers, your brake hoses, proprietary mineral oil, and the bleed kit. Adding a pair of rotors will add ~144€. By the time you add a caliper mounting bracket for your frame and/or fork, or an adapter to hang your shifter and/or dropper to the brake clamp, it will likely cost between 1100-1200€ to fit a complete new Brembo brakeset to your bike.
Of note, even though European consumer pricing includes tax, Brembo officially lists Gr-Pro prices exclusive of VAT since the tax rate varies slightly from country to country in the EU. Without VAT, a brake kit is 750€, rotors are 60€, caliper mounts are 21€, shifter adapters 30€, and spare pads are 33€.
The Brembo Gr-Pro brake kit will first be available in Europe only, starting in July 2026. It’ll hopefully roll out to broader international markets later in the year.