First Look 2017 Specialized Roubaix
The Classics bike gets some spring in it
Iwas getting rattled. Really rattled. I’d never been bounced around like that on a road bike before. I was trying to find the best way over huge cobbles with great gaps between them. At one point, there was only a narrow, somewhat-level strip in the centre of the “road” as one cobbled crater sat to the right, and one to the left. The riding was hellish.
It was early June. The day before, in Kortrijk, Belgium, the team from Specialized, along with collaborators from the high-performance automotive company Mclaren, presented the new Roubaix. The endurance bike first appeared in 2004 with Zertz elastomer inserts in the chainstays and fork to dampen road vibrations. Those Zertz inserts weren’t on the new 2017 Roubaix. Instead, at the back, the seatpost clamp sat 65 mm below the top of the seat tube, which gave the seatpost some more sway. The familiar CG-R seatpost provided 18 mm of down and back movement. The most striking feature, however, was in the steering tube, just above the head tube. It was a cartridge called Road Control. The cartridge houses three springs that soak up bumps in the road. “This is basically backwards of how you’d make a mountain bike setup,” said Eric Schuda, performance manager. “There’s no damping and extremely low friction. It’s a simple design.”
“This is basically backwards of how you’d make a mountain bike setup.”
Chris D’aluisio, creative specialist for road, has been working on the Road Control cartridge for two years. In the ’90s, when D’aluisio was at Cannondale, he was behind the Headshok Silk Road front suspension, so he’s no stranger to mechanical methods of managing bumps in the road. The three springs in the Road Control cartridge are stacked and provide 20 mm of compliance: 17 mm in a downward direction and 3 mm upward. There’s no damping because D’aluisio said that that would add friction, which would hinder the system’s ability to react quickly to the road. Road Control is simple. Mystifyingly simple. Would it really work?
Quite a few of us at the presentation assumed rider weight on the bars would press the Road Control system downward. We assumed there’d be bar bob. When I got out on the Roubaix later that day, the handling didn’t feel very different from a standard setup. Even sprinting out of the saddle with my hands in the drops, the bike behaved as a road bike should. D’aluisio later explained that a rider, even a heavy rider, doesn’t exert enough force to compress the Road Control system that much. So, what were those springs doing exactly?
As I rode through West Flanders, the land of the Classics, I chatted with Duncan Bradley, head of design and simulation at Mclaren Applied Technologies. He and his team helped Specialized with the design of the Roubaix with the data they gathered through simulations that explored the relationships between rider, bike, road surface and speed. To help me understand how the Road Control system was improving my ride, he used, not surprisingly I guess, a car analogy. Think of a car moving at speed along a road. When the wheels hit bumps in the road, they bounce around within the car’s wheel wells. The car itself continues down the road and remains level. The Road Control facilitates a similar process on the new Roubaix. While the springs are not very responsive to rider weight from above, they react very quickly to bumps in the road. With the springs working away, the tire stays in contact with the ground providing traction. The rider can continue to move forward instead of getting bounced around and losing speed.
The next day, I was able to compare the previous, Zertzequipped Roubaix with the new Road Control model. I took each bike along a stretch of Flemish cobbles. On the old Roubaix, I had to put more effort into keeping the bike on course as I seemed to ricochet off of the rocks. On the new model of Roubaix, I wouldn’t say I floated over the cobbles, but the ride was smoother and more controlled.
With all the compliance features high up on the bike’s frame, designers could make more aggressive changes below. The head tube was shortened. Its angle, as well as the fork’s offset, now match those of the race-oriented Tarmac. Chris Yu, head of applied technologies at Specialized, spoke of the challenges he often faces when designing tube shapes, especially for aerodynamics. Some shapes, for example, will reduce compliance where it’s needed. “But here, since we’re not relying on the fork to deflect and give you comfort, who cares?” Yu said. The new fork on Roubaix not only has Tarmac-level stiffness, which improves handling, but it’s more aero, too. The frame of the S-works version of the Roubaix, which will have flat-mount disc brakes, will weigh roughly 900 g. The plan is to have it spec’d with a sram etap group. The total projected weight is 7.2 kg.
Later that day, on our second test ride, we crossed the border into France. We turned onto the Carrefour de l’arbre sector that features in Paris-roubaix. That’s where I got really rattled. The cobbles were worse than anything I had just ridden in Flanders. Just nasty. It was a very appropriate introduction to the new Roubaix.