Cervelo’s new R5 hid in plain sight for weeks but is now out in the open since its quiet arrival in a hotel car park in Lille this weekend. You could be forgiven for thinking it’s not that different, visually at least, to any R5 in the last ten years. But Cervelo, and their pro-team Visma Lease-a-bike, are banking on pay back for the detailed work that's gone in to it.
Those who were underwhelmed with the visual and largely subtle aero developments apparent in the S5 – launching officially today – might be even more perplexed by this new R5.
Simon Smythe reviewed the outgoing S5 back in 2021, and loved it. We've since thought of it as one of the best road bikes out there, so we met with Cervelo’s Engineering Manager, Scott Roy, who gave us the insights into the new whip way ahead of it’s official release to the public.
He was keen to reassure us that there’s more to the changes than might first meet the eye.
“We’re limited a lot in what we can do from a manufacturing standpoint to get the weight down.”
When asked if it was the UCI that was limiting, he responded:
“The current manufacturing, the current materials that we have and that very first generation of that R5 kind of hit on a shape profile that was really optimised for balance of stiffness and weight”.
He went on to say:
“Every tube on the bike is new”.
We then asked whether the apparent raising of the top tube - seat tube junction, would make it less comfortable, he answered:
“So, yes, in short, yes. We added too much compliance in the previous generation bike. For any non-professional rider it was a good thing, but what we were finding was the feedback in seated efforts, we had a little bit of side-to-side sway. Increasing the top tube junction, we were able to reduce that slightly. The layup in the seat post itself doesn’t lose any of the vertical compliance, front to back. Little changes like that are from direct feedback we have from the team.”
“It might not seem like much, but when you think about a pendulum, it’s better to have weight around the bottom bracket. If you’ve got weight high up in a system, in a long unseated climb it eventually adds up to pretty significant energy loss.”
The clear ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ obvious in Cervelo’s recent approach takes an already minimal look of the outgoing R5 and puts it on a severe if not immediately obvious diet, a fight which means they've been forced to find grams in some not so usual places.
Lightweight ready-to-race
They've done it though. Weight figures put the new bike at a paltry 7.05kg with pedals, cages and even a Garmin mounted to the bike, albeit the teeniest version.
Despite the changes, comfort seems assured unless they've done something truly terrible, given the pencil thin seat stays, which when released from the moulds measure just a few hundredths of a millimetre less than the 10mm minimum set down by the UCI. They claim the paint application process gets them up to spec.
The bike we saw belonged to Matteo Jorgenson, and despite being a generously proportioned frame, the bike is extremely lightweight, with what they claim is a 650g frame weight for a 56cm, matched to a featherweight 300g fork. Builds of under 6.8kg must therefore be possible without going crazy or relying on too many ultra-exotic parts. Sepp Voss and Simon Yates will be pleased to hear that, for sure. Especially given how often they've all opted for the S5, even when the outgoing R5 was available.
No stone unturned to find every gram
Whilst the bike may look familiar, Cervelo has put significant effort into refining the bike.
The new one piece cockpit has been designed for the bike, saving weight.
The brake mount for example uses a similar approach to that on the Áspero 5 launched just last month, where the brake mounting hardware is integral to the material of the fork, bolted through, rather than requiring bonded-in hardware, saving weight.
“As a percentage of weight saving it’s huge. For a fork that weighs 300g, taking almost 20g out of that is a pretty big saving."
Asked about weights for complete bikes, he said:
“For a 56, we have a 650g frame and a 300g fork. We have a bike in the office, that we’ve built, not exotic parts. SRAM. 1x. It’s a 56, it’s bang on 6kg. 5.95kg.”
A firm two bike strategy
Cervelo has clearly doubled down on it’s two bike approach, when others, such as Specialized, rely solely on the Tarmac SL8 for climbing and flatter stages.
“You’ll have a condition in a certain race where you don’t have the right tool for the job.”
With some brands, such as Specialized sticking with the one bike strategy for now, it remains to be seen how this advantage will pan out.
Will the R5 make the difference?
For now R5 seems, on paper at least, like it could deliver an edge over the all-rounders and out-and-out aero bikes when the road points upwards.
Vingegaard is 3rd in the General Classification today, and he’s been on an aero optimised S5 for every stage so far. The TT bikes are the only tool for the job tomorrow, of course, so we’ll have to wait and see if the R5 can make the difference in the mountains on Monday.
