Five weeks of Whistler World Cup coverage on this site and not one complete production downhill bike in the mix — just a course preview, a results roundup, and a Forbidden prototype built out of an eMTB’s front triangle. That streak ends here. Norco released the Team DH on September 25, 2026, and it’s not a teaser or a spy shot. It’s an orderable bike, priced, spec’d, and backed by five years of World Cup racing before a single customer got to swing a leg over it.

Five years is a long development cycle even by DH standards. Greg Minnaar and Danny Hart both had a hand in it, and lead engineer Kirk McDowall didn’t stop at the whiteboard — he raced the finished production bike himself at a World Cup before signing off on it. (Gracey Hemstreet’s own prototype results are covered in our Whistler results roundup.) That’s not marketing framing — that’s just how long it takes to get a six-link suspension platform right when the people testing it are racing World Cups on the thing between prototype revisions.

Quick Take

What it is	Norco’s production World Cup DH race bike, five years in development
Launched	September 25, 2026
Suspension	HPV6 six-link high-pivot, 200mm front and rear
Adjustability	i-Track idler (AS+/AS-, ~20% anti-squat swing) and flip-chip progression (P+/P-)
Frame	Aluminum front triangle, carbon rear end, mixed-wheel only
Sizing	S1–S5, reach-adjust headset cups (0mm or ±5mm)
Claimed weight	19.0kg, Team DH 2 Fox, size S3
Price	Frame w/ Fox DHX2 Factory: $4,599 | Complete builds: $7,399–$7,999
Developed with	Greg Minnaar, Danny Hart, Gracey Hemstreet, Norco adidas Race Division
Best for	Racers and serious gravity riders who want a World Cup-proven platform, not a re-badged trail bike
Skip if	You want a 29in rear wheel option — this platform doesn’t offer one

Five Years of Prototype Spotting Ends Here

We previewed Whistler’s first DH World Cup three weeks ago and covered the results a few days after that, and Norco’s name came up constantly without a single complete bike attached to it — Hemstreet’s second-place finish covered in that results post, Minnaar running the team from the sidelines after retiring in 2024. We wrote about Minnaar’s résumé — 89 elite World Cup podiums, 22 wins, four world titles — and noted he’d moved into managing Norco’s race program instead of racing it himself. Turns out managing the program meant something more specific than we realized: he’d been elbow-deep in a six-link suspension prototype the whole time.

According to Canadian Cycling Magazine’s reporting on the launch, the bike went through “countless design iterations and hundreds of test days” at Norco’s NEST facility in British Columbia, on local test tracks, and at World Cup venues worldwide. Kirk McDowall, the Norco product development engineer who led the project, put it plainly: “At this level, riders notice everything. A few millimetres, a small change in stiffness or the way the bike settles through a gnarly section can make a difference at the finish line. Having the race team involved throughout development meant we could make those changes, put them straight back on track and iterate on what actually made the bike faster.” McDowall reportedly raced the final production version himself at the YongPyong World Cup in May before signing off on it.

Compare that to the Forbidden prototype we wrote up out of Whistler — a scrappy, genuinely clever shortcut built from a borrowed eMTB front triangle because a small brand doesn’t have five years or a dedicated test facility to spend on a second platform. Norco does. That’s not a knock on Forbidden’s approach; it’s just a different budget tier of the same problem. Five years and a full-time engineer racing your own product is what it looks like when a brand with real World Cup infrastructure decides to do this properly instead of fast.

The HPV6 Six-Link: What’s Actually New

Norco calls the new platform HPV6 — High Virtual Pivot Six-Link. The pitch is that a standard four-bar high-pivot design ties axle path, leverage curve, and anti-squat together whether you want them linked or not. HPV6 adds a second pair of links between the main suspension and the shock, which gives Norco’s engineers a way to tune those characteristics somewhat independently instead of accepting whatever compromise a simpler linkage hands you.

In practice: 200mm of travel front and rear, a high main pivot that keeps the rear axle moving rearward through the early part of the stroke — the thing high-pivot bikes do well on square-edge hits and braking bumps — and an idler pulley to route the chain around that pivot without murdering pedal feel. None of that is new to the category on its own. Forbidden’s Supernought runs a high-pivot Trifecta linkage. Norco’s own Sight VLT eMTB borrows a high-pivot layout from its acoustic trail platform. High-pivot suspension on gravity bikes stopped being exotic a few years ago. What’s specific to the Team DH is how much of that behavior you can actually adjust after the fact without buying different shims or a new shock.

How Do the Team DH’s AS+/AS- and P+/P- Settings Work?

The Team DH ships with two tool-adjustable settings that change how the suspension behaves without touching spring rate or damping. Here’s what each one does:

1. AS+ (anti-squat plus) — the stock setting. Uses Norco’s licensed i-Track idler mount in its higher position, which raises anti-squat for firmer pedaling support at the cost of more pedal kickback through square hits.
2. AS- (anti-squat minus) — moves the same idler to a lower mounting position, cutting anti-squat by roughly 20%. Less pedal kickback, more suspension bob under power. Better for tracks where you’re mostly coasting and the chain feedback through rock gardens matters more than pedaling efficiency.
3. P- (progression minus) — the stock flip-chip position at the shock eyelet. A slightly less progressive leverage curve, more usable travel deeper in the stroke.
4. P+ (progression plus) — flips the chip to add roughly 2.5% more progression, holding up better against big hits without blowing through travel, at some cost to small-bump sensitivity.

None of these require a new shock, a different spring, or a shop visit. That’s the actual pitch: race-team-level tuning range built into stock hardware, adjustable with tools most riders already own.

Frame, Geometry, and Sizing

The Team DH runs an aluminum front triangle paired with a carbon rear end — not the full-carbon approach a lot of flagship DH bikes default to. Aluminum up front for stiffness and crash tolerance where a race bike takes the most abuse; carbon out back to cut unsprung and rotating mass without the repair costs of a cracked carbon front triangle after a bad landing. It’s a sensible split, and one that also keeps the frame kit price under $5,000 instead of pushing it toward $6,000-plus territory the way a full-carbon chassis usually does.

Wheels are mixed-only — 29in front, 27.5in rear, no option to run a 29in rear. That’s consistent with where most of the World Cup field has landed over the past few seasons, and it matches what Minnaar and Hart were racing throughout development, so it’s not a surprising call. It does mean riders attached to a full-29in setup are shopping elsewhere.

Sizing runs S1 through S5, with size-specific rear-center lengths and reach-adjust headset cups offering 0mm or ±5mm of adjustment per size — enough to fine-tune reach without changing frame size entirely. A size S3 with the +5mm cup measures 463mm reach, 632mm stack, a 62.5° head angle, and a 1,282mm wheelbase, per Enduro Mountainbike Magazine’s first-ride geometry breakdown — numbers that sit squarely in current World Cup race-bike territory, not stretched-out or conservative relative to what else is racing this season.

Pricing and the Two Builds

Three ways to buy in: a frameset with a Fox DHX2 Factory shock at $4,599, or two complete builds. The Team DH 2 RockShox runs $7,399 with a RockShox BoXXer Select D2 fork and Vivid Coil Base shock. The Team DH 2 Fox runs $7,999 with a Fox 40 Performance Elite fork (GRIP X2 damper) and DHX2 Factory shock. Claimed weight on the Fox build in a size S3 is 19.0kg — not a lightweight DH bike, but not an outlier either once you account for the coil shock and dual-crown fork every bike in this category is carrying.

Worth noting: neither stock build spec’s the flagship hardware from SRAM’s 2027 DH ecosystem we reviewed back in March — the RockShox build gets the Select-tier BoXXer and base Vivid Coil, not the Butterwagon fork or Ultimate shock from that lineup. That’s a normal spec decision at this price point, but if you’re the rider chasing every last percent, budget for an upgrade path rather than assuming stock parts get you there.

For scale: our review of the Frameworks Enduro/DH frame covers the other end of this trade — a smaller, newer brand betting riders don’t need a legacy dealer network behind a frame kit. Norco is the opposite bet: five years of World Cup validation and a dealer network that’ll actually have warranty parts in stock, at a frame-kit price that still undercuts most full-carbon DH flagships. Both are legitimate ways to spend frame money. They’re just not the same trade.

What First-Ride Reviewers Are Saying

Our team hasn’t put miles on a Team DH yet — this is a launch breakdown, not a trail test, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise. But outlets who did get early ride time are consistent on one point: the rear suspension is unusually sensitive for a bike this weight. Enduro Mountainbike Magazine’s first-ride review described the rear end as “highly sensitive,” generating “huge amounts of traction” on repeated impacts, and noted the bike didn’t feel as penalized by its claimed weight as the number suggests — crediting the low-mounted shock and linkage placement for keeping mass centralized rather than hung out at the extremes of the frame. Their tester also preferred the milder P- setting for everyday trail comfort, saving P+ for bigger, faster tracks — which tracks with how Norco describes the setting’s intent.

We’ll follow up with our own ride impressions once a test unit is available. For now, treat the early consensus as a strong signal, not a verdict.

Who Should Care About This

Racers and serious gravity riders shopping for a World Cup-proven platform. Five years of racing under Minnaar, Hart, and Hemstreet is a longer validation runway than most DH bikes get before release.

Anyone who followed our Whistler prototype-spotting coverage this month. This is the payoff — a finished, buyable bike instead of another bike-check teaser.

Riders who want tool-adjustable suspension behavior without a shop visit. The AS+/AS- and P+/P- range covers a real spread of track conditions without touching spring rate.

Who Should Skip This

Anyone wanting a 29in rear wheel. The Team DH is mixed-wheel only, full stop.

Budget-conscious riders who don’t need race-day pedigree. At $7,399–$7,999 for a complete bike, this is priced for people who’ll use what it’s built for. A park-lap-only rider doesn’t need this platform.

The Bottom Line

Norco didn’t rush the Team DH, and it shows in how specific the development story is — a named engineer racing his own product at a World Cup, three Elite wins on the prototype before the production bike existed, five years of iteration instead of a two-season refresh. The HPV6 platform’s real selling point isn’t that high-pivot suspension is new — it isn’t — it’s that Norco built in more tool-adjustable range than most race bikes bother offering. Whether that range matters to you depends on how seriously you race. For riders shopping in this category, it’s a legitimate World Cup bike you can actually order, at a price that undercuts the full-carbon flagships without cutting the suspension sophistication that makes this segment worth paying for in the first place.

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Reporting sourced from Canadian Cycling Magazine’s coverage of the Team DH launch and Enduro Mountainbike Magazine’s first-ride review. No test unit has been ridden by our team at time of publication.