Audi TT-RS Carbon Fiber Brake Ducts

As I mentioned in my last track day recap, while the Audi TTRS brakes are massive, many of track junkies have reported they suffer from getting too hot after a long HPDE session of late braking. Luckily there are a few easy fixes to help improve this, with the easiest (and cheapest) being these 3D printed brake ducts made by enthusiast Mark Bergers. They cost €80 (~$90 USD). You can email him to place an order by clicking this link. They were previously made using carbon fiber (as pictured here), but Mark has since changed to 3D printing for an even more precise product.

According to the designer, these will result in 24% cooler brakes based on his thermal testing above. This reduction in heat will help reduce fading and boiling brake fluid  on track days or heavy road use on warm summer days. Based on personal experience (I had them installed on my first track day in the RS) I was able to be pretty hard on my brakes, and other than a little fade at the end of my second (or maybe third?) session the brakes held up pretty well for being otherwise bone stock and suffering from my less than smooth driving style.

Mark is working on a Stage 2 version of the product in the future, pictured above, which will improve the temperature of the rotor/disc by up to 50% if used in combination with the ducts pictured here, which I’ll be on the lookout for.

The scoops are easy to install, and work with the factory cut-outs on the bottom of the belly pan. Audi already has engineered an opening for air to flow towards the brakes, so these scoops just help force more air into the opening and hence provide more cooling. The only downside is the best place to screw them in is where there is a gap between two belly pans that you need to remove to do an oil change, so you’ll need to remove the ducts when doing an oil change, too.

The install pictures are less than exciting, but you can see how the scoop would help, as well as an approximate idea of where to install. I used self tapping screws and they are holding up well after a few months of daily driving. Another nice feature is that because these are relatively low profile, you don’t really have to worry about scraping much – as you can see compared to the mud flap, it’s not even the lowest point of the front.

If you want something a little more hardcore and robust, Cantrell Motorsports makes a really nice brake duct kit that you can find here. The kit integrates into the heat shields, has larger scoops, and really rams the air straight into the brakes compared to the factory cooling. It is a lot more expensive at $699, but as you can see from their website it contains a lot of machined parts and will definitely provide even more cooling – this is probably only needed for those who really plan to track their cars hard, but is a really nice kit for those who need/want it.

For me, these $90 air scoops from Mark are plenty sufficient for my needs. I still plan to update my pads, rotor, and fluid to something a little more performance oriented to ensure the brakes are really u p to the job. If anyone has any suggestions on pads – I’d love to hear them. I’m trying to find the right balance of performance friction and low dust output, but generally those seem to be mutually exclusive. For rotors I plan to run Girodisc 2 piece rotors that will save on weight some, and will probably go with Motul brake fluid since I had good results on my S4 with it. I’m hoping to have all of these upgrades completed before my track day, so it will be interesting to see how the ducts + upgraded pads/rotors/fluid perform together.