Usually WorldTour tier bike launches contain one thing of a fanfare. Maybe we get invited out to a group camp, or a standalone launch the place the related bicycle press can take a look at out the brand new machine, normally with a few indentured skilled riders there to say the way it’s considerably higher than something they’ve ever ridden and that they can’t wait to experience it for the upcoming season.
Van Rysel, famed for its high-value bikes just like the RCR Professional, appears to have launched a brand new aero bike with no fanfare in any respect, hiding it inside a sub-page of its web site titled ‘prepared for 2025’, together with different such minutiae as a brand new color for the helmet – by the way a extra seen color seemingly in keeping with the explanations for the extra seen helmets on the new Ineos package – and a barely rehashed jersey design. In biking media phrases this can be a little like in The Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy, whereby the plans for a brand new hyperspace bypass had been “on show within the backside of a locked submitting cupboard caught in a disused bathroom with an indication on the door saying ‘Watch out for the Leopard’.”
There may be little or no data on the brand new machine, however this isn’t the primary time we’ve seen it. It was first noticed on the opening phases of the Tour de France earlier this yr, full with a disruptive paint scheme in order to confuse the attention. In all honesty, our personal pictures of what was beforehand dubbed the ‘FCR’ are extra detailed than the few pictures from this web site, so I encourage you to pore over these pictures for the frameset particulars.
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Not massively useful as photographs go, however it’s a minimum of in group colors so it is roughly nailed on as a group bike. (Picture credit score: Van Rysel)
This is the present RCR Professional – they do look comparable however the head tube is way shallower. (Picture credit score: Van Rysel)
F for Quick: 13 watts sooner
In addition to a YouTube video completely awash with dynamism, motion, and cinematography however devoid of any element by any means, all we’ve got to go on is that the F in ‘RCR-F’ stands for ‘Quick’. I’m certain we may have most likely figured that out, until the bike is decidedly extra French than the usual Van Rysel RCR and entails a baguette for a downtube.
In response to the Van Rysel web site the RCR-F has been developed in collaboration with Swiss Facet, in line with the event of the RCR, and neatly matching the group’s ongoing wheel sponsorship. Past that, and that the bike is “designed to slice by way of the air with precision”, and that it “units a brand new normal for aero bikes”, we all know no extra.
On the final level, our personal impartial wind tunnel testing concluded that absolutely the aero variations between bikes on the highest stage of our sport are actually fairly small, so whereas the model could declare to set a brand new normal, we do count on will probably be an enchancment on the usual RCR, however seemingly within the ballpark of different aero bikes.
Having searched the Van Rysel web site it’s evident that the bike isn’t at present on the market. The mannequin doesn’t exist but for customers, however given the UCI guidelines and Van Rysel’s robust business curiosity in promoting the bike, we count on to see it on the cabinets comparatively quickly after it hits the primary races of the season. Anticipate to see it rolled out throughout the Spring Classics with heavy protection, because the model does like to proclaim its Flandrian heritage.
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The pendulum swings but additional
Whereas this most likely isn’t the complete, all singing all dancing launch of the RCR-F, it’s one other mannequin in a rising trade pattern again in direction of correct aero bikes. The newest, wild-looking Colnago Y1Rs is one other instance too, and now that manufacturers have made their light-weight bikes extra aero whereas protecting them at or across the UCI weight restrict, it appears there’s now an urge for food for full-bore aero machines once more.
Usually when groups have the choice of an aero and a light-weight bike we see the aero machine used because the default. The Canyon Aeroad, the Cervélo S5. If that is the pattern it does beg the query of what is going to develop into of the all-rounders of the present period. Specialised has room to manoeuvre, and will relaunch the Venge if it needed to decide to aero. Pinarello has at all times been a one-bike firm with the Dogma, so don’t count on something right here. Trek although appears to have backed itself right into a nook by making the Madone extra of a svelte all-rounder; it’s not just like the dearly departed Emonda may return as an aero bike.
