One of the most well liked bikes of 2024 appears to be like to have a sibling becoming a member of its ranks after Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale riders have been noticed on a brand new aero bike from French model Van Rysel.
In November final 12 months, AG2R La Mondiale introduced that French sporting retailer Decathlon could be becoming a member of as a co-title sponsor. With this announcement got here the information that Decathlon’s premium biking model Van Rysel could be offering the crew with its RCR Pro street bike.
When it was debuted the RCR Pro was introduced as an all-round, do-it-all race bike, mixing aerodynamic optimisation with low weight. Upon its launch, the bike gained a mass of consideration with the publicly accessible duplicate initially promoting out within the first few hours.
With this new aero bike, Van Rysel look to be bucking the development of different producers and as an alternative of streamlining its product vary it appears to be like to be diversifying it as an alternative.
It was solely final week that Trek introduced a brand new Gen 8 Madone that mixed components of each the Madone and Emonda, finally killing off the latter.
Although we are able to solely speculate presently, the brand new bike that appears set to be referred to as the FCR – alluded to by a high tube decal. It is clearly set to be a completely aero-optimised machine. A fast look over the bike’s silhouette reveals all of the hallmarks of a devoted aero bike. The deep junction between the headtube, high tube, and down tube appears to be like to profit from the UCI’s leisure on aero profiles.
At the beginning of 2023, the UCI revised the rules governing the permissible aero profiles for bike design. As a consequence, we now have seen bikes turning into extra aero, specifically behind the top tube the place the highest tube and down tube intersect. Van Rysel just isn’t the primary model to steer into this design rationale, with the brand new Pinarello Dogma F and the unreleased Canyon Aeroad additionally making use of this design.
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Lower down on the entrance of the bike the fork is significantly deeper than the fork discovered on the RCR. The transfer to aerodynamically optimise the entrance of the bike is smart, given these are the main edges, and it is the place we see most producers focus their efforts these days.
Much like with the RCR Pro, Deda appears to be like to have been referred to as upon for the built-in cockpit with the one-piece unit seamlessly integrating with the frameset with using aero headset spacers.
The FCR title just isn’t new for Van Rysel with the model already utilizing the title for its premium aero street helmet, making it logical for the model to hold it over to an all-out aero bike.
Sitting contained in the large stance fork that appears able to housing some very large rubber is the most recent tyre from DT Swiss, Continental and Swiss Side the Aero 111 aero tyre. This front-only tyre has a specifically developed vortex-generating tread sample that’s mentioned to extend the crusing impact throughout the rim of the wheel.
The rear of the bike additionally highlights the bike’s aero intentions with the seat stays sporting a deep part aero profile. Much like on the RCR Pro, the seat stays have a large stance with a brief horizontal part becoming a member of them to the seat tube.
This permits the bladed stays to be oriented nearer to being parallel with the path of airflow which is able to as soon as once more improve the bike’s effectivity by the air.
We have seen designs like this used on observe bikes lately to present higher complete system aerodynamics when the rotating rear wheel and the rider are factored into the equation.
Beyond what could be made out from the images we must await Van Rysel to launch particulars on the brand new bike for any particular information round the advantages of the brand new bike over the RCR Pro.