BIKE TEST – SPESH vs SPESH!
THE ROUBAIX RETURNS TO RACING, BUT CAN IT MATCH SPECIALIZED’S OWN RACING WEAPON OF CHOICE: THE S-WORKS TARMAC?
Specialized’s new S-Works Roubaix battles it out with its S-Works Tarmac. But which is the most special Specialized?
As you may well have seen with Phillipe Gilbert’s Paris-Roubaix victory, Specialized has revamped the legendary Roubaix. Most surprisingly, it’s only been just shy of three years since the last Roubaix, with its ground breaking Future Shock front suspension system, changed expectations of comfort for an endurance bike.
The Roubaix has been in Specialized’s range since 2004, and in the following years has notched up seven Paris-Roubaix wins – the seventh coming this year on the new 2020 model. The bike has always been about adding compliance to a race bike. Starting out with various experiments with ‘Zertz’ (elastomerbased inserts bonded within holes) in the seatstays and fork legs and evolving into the second generation Future Shock-equipped machine today.
The (first Future Shock-equipped) SL5 was a very successful bike for the brand (collecting a CyclingPlus bike of the year award on the way). But it was always seen as very much a sportive special. That’s probably in no small part because of the way the front end looked when unridden: the Future Shock mounted inside the steerer/ head-tube with plenty sitting above made the front end look tall, even though when you got on board (as with any suspension system) the front end sagged under the rider weight (preload) and looked just like a ‘normal’ bike.
Though even taking that into account the SL5 was taller up front than either the Venge or the Tarmac and whilst the Roubaix still proved popular amongst pro riders for the very unique conditions of the northern classics and their famous cobbles, it was little used outside of those events. The geometry and capability of the SL5 Roubaix also proved popular with the burgeoning ‘gravel’ scene and riders wanting to get a little further off the beaten track. So when Specialized rolled out a lightweight carbon Diverge (their dedicated gravel bike) with the Future Shock it was hugely successful, but at the expense of the success of the Roubaix. It seems riders were happy to take on a Diverge as an all-rounder with its deeper off-road capability when looking for a ‘one bike for all’.
That meant that the Roubaix was accelerated in its development and taken back to being a pure racer’s bike (but customers would still get an endurance flavour to it too). Take a look at the bike and you can see plenty of the same design language as both the Tarmac and Venge. Like both of those the new Roubaix has spent plenty of time in Specialized’s own wind tunnel. All of the research on the Tarmac and Venge (in both its carbon R&D lab and wind tunnel) led to Specialized’s head of applied technology Chris Yu creating what it call its FreeForm tube library: millions of calculations, plenty of designs and
The S-Works frame is constructed using Specialized’s high grade FACT 11r materials
hours and hours of super-computer calculation power resulted in a whole slew of shapes that meet engineering needs and aero goals, all of which are then prototyped and tested in the wind tunnel. The end result is a bike that’s more aerodynamic than the Tarmac SL6 and a Roubaix that’s as aerodynamic as the original Venge. Pretty impressive stuff for a bike built for its comfort and compliance as much as anything else. For example, according to Specialized, compared to the previous version the new bike is 14 seconds faster over 40km for the same effort.
All new from the ground up
The S-Works frame is constructed using Specialized’s high-grade FACT 11r materials and the carbon lay-up is designed to offer optimal stiffness where it’s needed (through the bottom bracket and head-tube) to keep weight low. The S-Works frame is sub 900g (the FACT 12r Tarmac is sub 800g) and as with the (Roubaix) SL5 they’ve designed the Roubaix chassis as a system to maintain the smoothness levels of that groundbreaking bike whilst adding in more control over the compliance.
At the rear end they’ve carried over the simple yet smart design trick of lowering the seat clamp further down the seat-tube to give maximum unsupported seatpost (so it’s freer to flex foreand-aft). The broad aero-profile seat-tube lowers the clamp 65mm into the frame (accessed by a long bolt sitting under a rubber cover). Gone is the old weirdly zig-zagged CGR post replaced with a new D-shaped Pavé post (the S-Works Pavé post comes as standard across the whole range, from the £2600 comp to the S-Works Sagan at £10,000). The post is based on the same aerodynamic profile as the Tarmac post. The layup has been altered on the upper portion (under the saddle clamp) to offer compliance on the same level as the CGR but in a much simpler form. The standard post has an offset head, but Specialized tells us that there will be a 0 degree option available too (and if you ride a current Tarmac you can upgrade with the Pavé post).
Geometry wise the Roubaix follows the traits of the Tarmac and Venge, sharing the same parallel 73.5 degree angles on our 58cm test bike. It does differ somewhat elsewhere with, as you could imagine, a taller stack (630mm compared to 591mm on the Tarmac) and a shorter reach by
10mm (392mm compared to 402mm). Stack is the vertical distance from the bottom bracket to the centre of the top of the head-tube and reach is the horizontal distance. The wheelbase is also longer (thanks to the Roubaix’s larger tyre capacity of 32c) at 1014mm compared to 1005mm.
Back to the Future
The biggest advance on the new bike is the reworking of the Future Shock. The new Future Shock 2.0 takes the original simple sprung system and adds both damping and adjustment.
Though the 2.0 does follow the same principles as the original unit, Chris Yu, head of applied technologies at Specialized explains: “With the (original Future Shock) we recognised the enormous benefit of suspending the rider and not the bike. With the traditional location of suspension units somewhere in the frame (between the fork and head-tube being the most common), we found several significant disadvantages, especially for a road platform. These disadvantages include a loss of pedalling efficiency through bobbing at the front, as well as a compromise in handling since there is a nonrigid load path between the front and rear wheels – often leading to a feeling of vagueness when cornering. Placing the compliance unit above the head-tube resulted in all the benefits of increased compliance while avoiding all the disadvantages. The beauty of the system is the ability to separate the duties of introducing compliance from the duties of a race-ready frame and fork (maintaining a stiff structure).”
The new unit offers 20mm of movement and inside the new system is an oil-port, which it is claimed simultaneously controls both compression and rebound damping so the front end feels more controlled and more progressive (and the damping means you don’t experience a ‘thunk’ when it tops or bottoms out in the rough). It’s a single-circuit system and works in much the same way as a mountain bike fork. The biggest difference from the original unit, however, is that the Future Shock 2.0 (combined with the dedicated Future Stem on higher models) eschews a traditional top-cap in favour of an adjuster (like Cannondale’s old Head Shok system (although that based the suspension unit
under the head-tube). So you can now adjust the front end on the fly from near-lock out to fully open.
Is smoother really faster?
It’s typical of Specialized to make pretty bold claims about a debut bike, but so far we’ve been impressed with the new Roubaix; so how does it compare to the Tarmac - a tremendously accomplished bike in its own right? With that in mind I decided to pitch the S-Works Roubaix against the S-Works Tarmac. Both come at the super-bike price of £9500, both are ridden by the pros and both come equipped with high-end Roval carbon wheels, S-Works components and power meters. The only difference being the Tarmac comes with Dura-Ace Di2 and the Roubaix SRAM’s new Red AXS eTap.
On smooth roads, the Roubaix feels like a Tarmac with a slightly more forgiving position. The stack height (when you account for sag in the Future Shock) works out around 20mm taller than the Tarmac, and the reach is around a centimetre short of the Tarmac’s long-pro position). It handles with absolute finesse, though is slightly more controlled than the flighty Tarmac (it has a little more trail). In fact, it’s probably closer to the Venge in its on-thelimit responses. On the climbs the Roubaix is a