Adjustable length, but no way to rotate the “ski poleâ€. They are angled, but it looks like additional Angle adjustability would require a different piece for the bar riser interface. They would probable work well for 90% of the target population, but I am sure Wattshop will be busy making a mounting system for their bars.
Way too early to judge, but based on these photos I’m not happy with it at all. Adjusting height, width, tilt of the front end looks more like a 20min affair than a 30second affair, which means whoever uses it will never find their optimal position on this bike. And it looks, if anything, slower than the gen 2. Those are two big strikes against it. Let’s wait and see what the actual release bike is though.
Interesting to see the departure from the really wide fork crown. I find it funny that aerodynamicist s don’t seem to be able to make up their minds on whether that is a good idea. Maybe it was a design feature that was particularly relevant for the TriSpoke (the WT pictures for the original SC had a HED TriSpoke).
The one feature I can’t make out is whether the downtube fairs the water bottle area. My gen 2 SC is super slow with water bottles and Ronald Kuba’s testing found no aero bottle worked well. I guess bike companies have probably come to the conclusion that hydration is for the Tri crowd.
I like the new bar arrangement. The old stem/riser arrangement was great for fitting a wide range of people, but all that cast aluminum made for a heavy bike and modifications were difficult.
Another interesting design feature would be wiring. I am pretty sure they won’t offer a version for cable shifting, but with Shimano looking at wireless there doesn’t seem to be a need for fiddling with internal wiring anymore.
Now what would be really interesting would be another WT shootout with the best of the old-school rim brake bikes against the new disc bikes.
reportedly, shimano is looking at semi-wireless, not a full wireless setup, so there will still be a need for “fiddling with” that, plus you would still have to run brake lines to the front and rear. If you’re doing that, then running di2 wires isn’t really any extra effort (from a frame design perspective).
Shimano coming out with semi wireless sounds like just pushing out new product for its own sake ?
I’m really hoping there’s a totally different frame for tri, as there doesn’t seem to be any easy way to integrate hydration, bento, or a draft box on that frame.
The new Speedmax really nails this in my opinion. It looks more or less like a sleek TT bike even with nutrition, hydration, and storage integrated out of sight. Just unclear how it tests aero wise. Looking forward to the non-UCI Speed Concept and seeing some testing of the two.
I’d be quite happy if it was no faster than my current SC, as then I wouldn’t need to spend another 8k on a bike. But I’m pretty sure it will be a few watts faster as there’s no other reason Trek would have waited so long to release a disc brake TT bike.
But also I won’t get one unless the non-UCI bike has significantly better integration.
I really hope their white paper has drag/yaw plots of the old SC, new SC (UCI and non-UCI), new Scott Plasma, P5, and new Canyon. As everyone else is just saying we are 100 watts faster than our old bike, which doesn’t really help consumers at all when choosing between bikes. But I guess they’ll only release something like that if their new bike is stellar.
I’d be quite happy if it was no faster than my current SC, as then I wouldn’t need to spend another 8k on a bike. **But I’m pretty sure it will be a few watts faster **as there’s no other reason Trek would have waited so long to release a disc brake TT bike.
With Trek’s track record on rim vs. disc, one shouldn’t be so sure (see Madone rim vs Madone disc)
Every brands track record of rim vs disc, unless they didn’t have a good rim bike.
All the claims of massive improvement are just catching it up to the 2012 standard of the leaders
Interesting that it looks like it will have good x adjustment, but Z is a bit primitive. Assuming different angled versions of the bracket.
I really hope their white paper has drag/yaw plots of the old SC, new SC (UCI and non-UCI), new Scott Plasma, P5, and new Canyon. As everyone else is just saying we are 100 watts faster than our old bike, which doesn’t really help consumers at all when choosing between bikes. But I guess they’ll only release something like that if their new bike is stellar.
Ah I just read through and saw they use averaged drag across all yaw angles without a weighting…. That’s super lame so the s5 disc is likely only a watt faster than the old s5 once you weight it…
I assumed they used a weighting towards low yaw as everyone else does
I’ll go against the grain…I think it is a good update. As a former owner of two SC’s, I think the main improvements that were needed were:
Disc brakes
Get rid of the press fit BB (I’m assuming they did this?)
Anything else I think is icing on the cake. Of course the bike has to fit like any other bike would have to. But if the geo meets your fit needs, then good to go. And of course I’m also assuming they’ve put mounts on the back of the seat tube for an aero box like previous gen
We’ve already discussed to death how all these top end frames are so close in terms of aero that there is little to gain.
Is it me or does it look like a 2010 Speed Concept but with disc brakes?
It looks like a cross between the Trek TTX Equinox and the new Scott Plasma
Because of the wonky UCI rules the bike just looks weird. Will have to see the tri version before I pass judgment. Integration and adjustment better be good though…
Though that was not a new frame design. It was more let’s slap discs on it and see how little we can change our molds as they are expensive.
Ummm…no…it was actually a case of actively changing the new rim brake version with questionable design choices so that it wouldn’t still be faster than the disc brake version. With BOTH being slower than the previous rim brake version :-/