Six of the best
With its new Systemsix, Cannondale claims to have produced the fastest road bike in the world
It’s odd that Cannondale has taken so long to enter the aero-road market, because judging by its slick time-trial bike, the Slice, it clearly knows a thing or two about wind cheating. Whatever the reason, the wait is over with the launch of its latest road bike, the Systemsix.
Cannondale is keen to refer to the Systemsix as a ‘faster’ road bike, not an ‘aero’ road bike. The reason, it says, is that it wants to appeal to a broad market, rather than just racers.
‘The notion that only elite racers need to worry about aero drag is a fallacy,’ says Nathan Barry, the Australian aerodynamicist Cannondale brought in to front the project. ‘Every level of rider can benefit. Even at 15kmh, 50% of the resistance you encounter on a bike is still due to aero drag.’
According to Cannondale’s findings, the average rider, cruising on the flat at 30kmh, can expect to expend around 10% less energy on the Systemsix compared to its current top-end race machine, the Supersix Evo. Yet some of its other claims are even more intriguing.
‘The consensus is an aero bike is not the right choice for climbing,’ says Barry. ‘But the tipping point, we discovered, is actually a 6% slope before the Systemsix will begin to lose out to the Supersix Evo at 1kg lighter. And it might surprise you how little it loses by.’
Cannondale took data from pro rider Rigoberto Uran’s ascent of Alpe d’huez on a Supersix Evo and calculated that, had he been riding the Systemsix, he would only have been 10 seconds slower. A good level club rider, meanwhile, could expect to lose 20-30 seconds, an amount of time that Barry is adamant would be more than made up for elsewhere on a ride.
While it was busy crunching the data, Cannondale also calculated that the Systemsix would beat the Supersix Evo by 7.2m (roughly four bike lengths) in a 200m sprint at 1,000W, and that it would be 30 seconds faster over a 10km lone attack.
What about against competitor products, such as the Trek Madone, Specialized Venge and Cervélo S5? Well, according to Barry’s ‘yaw weighted
drag’ data (a concept he developed himself to compare bikes more fully across a full yaw sweep) the Systemsix is ahead of its closest rival – the Trek Madone – by around 6W at 50kmh, and 20W over the Scott Foil.
Of course, we’ve only got Cannondale’s word for those stats, so take them as you will.
Knot’s landing
The Systemsix’s speed gains have been mostly made through aero frame and fork tube profiles, although much of it is attributable to system integration. At the heart of that are Cannondale’s new Knot-branded components.
The Knot Systembar bar/stem is the most obvious. It has the aesthetic of a one-piece but is in fact two-piece, offering 8° of pitch adjustment to allow fine-tuning of the handlebar position. Slotted spacers ensure height can easily be tweaked too, without disturbing the cables and hydraulic brake hoses that all run, unseen, within.
The new Knot 64 wheels come with 64mm deep rims that are a whopping 32mm at their widest. And – wait for it – Cannondale has fitted 23mm tyres.
That would appear to be an odd choice considering the hugely bulbous rim shape, but thanks to the capacious 21mm internal rim width, the seemingly skinny rubber actually measures up to what Cannondale considers to be an optimal 26mm.
This is based on an aero patent it has licensed from wheel company Hed. The idea is that a skinny leading edge paired with a wide rim creates a narrower wake and ultimately makes it faster.
One last big bit of news is that for 2019 Cannondale will fit Power2max power meters as standard on some models, including the Systemsix. The only caveat is that they come inactivated and will require a one-off fee of around £450, payable to Power2max, to actually use them.
If that seems like a disingenuous offer on Cannondale’s part, look at it like this: the company says it hasn’t hiked its bike prices to include them, and the activation fee is still an awful lot cheaper than most alternatives. And if you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to.
As always, we will be able to give you a full review of the bike once a testable version finds its way into our hands.