R3

I was watching the highlight video of Paris-Roubaix and was curious about the bike riden by Fabian Cancellara to the win. Here it is, the Cervelo R3.


The first thing I noticed about it was the super thin seat stays. If you read on, they say that those seat stays aren't actually necessary, except for torsional loads, so they built them almost like leaf springs. The Bayonne version (still prototype) is only 750g! Here's another amazing fact: Normally, the bikes ridden on the Paris-Roubaix are heavy. They have big tires, heavy wheels, and stout components. (Read about what happened to George Hincapie to see why that matters for this race.) Cervelo says this bike is built up for the classics at the UCI limit of 6.8kg!

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you can watch a video of some people taking the prototype Bayonne and prototype Cross R3 off-road. Besides being able to see how well these bikes hold up, I love the music. Nice work on the video.

Despite being very light, these bikes seem strong. I'm going to try and get an R3 for testing. I'll let you know when I get it.