Our intrepetation on this forum of a "slammed" position is on a road bike with a shallow angle. It's like the Euro pros ride, powerful but not as aero. It's explained quite well on John Cobb's site.

On a P3 your most aero position wold be at a steep 78/79 seat angle position. Two good explanations of the tri aero position are found in the Slowtwitch articles or on Tom Demerly's site. If you live near Michigan I'd strongly recommend visiting Tom or find a good tri bike fitter near you. If not read the articles, take a few digital photos of yourself on your bike and post them here for some opinions.

Thanks for the quick reply. I have read John's article also. Just looking for suggestions for the P3.

It can be done on a P3 but wouldn't be the norm. I know a guy who rides slammed on P2K. He rides with a 74 angle and with drop bars/shorty aero bars. He's quite tall with really long legs. Wins his AG almost everytime out in the sprint tris. He tried the steep position and found that in his case, he was slower.

"Would you recommend your slam set up?"

i don't have a slam set up. i'm not a slam fan.

i believe just about every cervelo, dual and up, should be set up with the seat clamp in it's turned-around, forward position.

i wish gerard would send out all the bikes to dealers with the saddle mounted on a turned-around clamp, so that his dealers would have to scratch their heads and think. if they had to physically turn it back around the other way in order to send the bikes out that way then they'd at least have to consider how the bike ought to be set up.

i'm pretty sure many of these sell the bikes in the shallow configuration because the seat clamp looks more normal in that configuration, and they're too stupid and lazy to investigate how the bike works.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I tried out my P2K in a Slam position to try and get it UCI legal and it was only a moderate success. The seat that far back (5cm behind BB) really made the handling poor. A more forward (76 or so degrees for me) is far faster.

Makes absolute sense. Trying to eek out a 72-73 deg seat angle on a P2k or P3 will put your weight so far back on the bike that the front end will feel hmmmm....light and skittish. The rider's weight distribution over the wheels is way out of whack. These bikes were designed with short chainstays and are optimized for 74-78 deg riding.

FWIW, I'll bet if Cervelo showed the bikes with the forward position on their website and in their ads, as well as shipped them that way, we'd eventually come to see this as the "normal" way and the rear postion would look backward.