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75 More Horsepower, Nearly the Same ET: What the New TRX Drag Race Tells You About Braking
Source: Autoblog — August 10, 2026, covering a drag-race video by The Fast Lane Truck on YouTube.
Ram's new 2027 TRX arrives with a supercharged 6.2L pushing 777 hp — 75 more than the 702-hp Hellcat-powered 2021–2024 truck. By every horsepower-per-dollar or spec-sheet metric, the newer truck should dominate. It doesn't. In a standing quarter-mile it won by a nose. In the rolling race, the outgoing truck edged the newcomer.
That gap — or rather the lack of one — points directly at mass and thermal management, not just output. More power going into a heavier platform means more kinetic energy that has to come back out through the brakes. Every pound the new TRX added to carry that drivetrain upgrade is a pound the brake system has to arrest at the end of a straight, lap after lap, on a ranch road or a dry lake bed.
Why the Brake System Is the Real Story Here
The TRX is a 6,000+ lb truck doing supercar power numbers in a platform designed for off-road punishment. Factory calipers and rotors are sized for a daily driver with occasional towing — not for repeated hard stops from triple-digit speeds. Heat soak is the failure mode. Once the OEM pads fade, you're managing a very heavy truck on very little friction.
The stock braking system on both generations of TRX — the outgoing 702-hp truck and the new 777-hp model — shares the same fundamental limitation: it's built to a budget and a street-certification standard, not to the thermal load this truck can generate in performance use.
The Alcon Big Brake Kit for the Ram TRX (2021+)
The purpose-built answer for the 2021+ TRX platform is the Alcon Big Kit for Dodge Ram TRX (2021+) — a complete big-brake system developed specifically for this truck. Alcon's motorsport-derived caliper and rotor architecture is engineered around the thermal and mechanical demands of high-output trucks in demanding use, not street-certification minimums.
Key upgrade reasons for TRX owners — both generations:
- Larger rotor swept area — more surface to absorb and dissipate heat, directly countering the fade that kills OEM setups under repeated hard stops.
- Alcon caliper design — consistent clamping force across temperature range, which the OEM sliding-caliper setup can't match once heat builds.
- Off-road rated — designed to handle the clearance, debris, and suspension articulation demands of a truck this size running hard in the dirt.
- Full kit — no mixing of unvalidated components. Everything is matched and tested together for this platform.
If you're running the 2021–2024 TRX, this kit addresses the single biggest performance ceiling on an already capable truck. If you're in a 2027 TRX with 75 more horsepower to manage, the argument for upgrading the stoppers before the truck hits the dirt or the drag strip is even more straightforward.
Price: $3,750.00 USD