Reactions to the new Colnago Y1Rs aero bike have generally been along the lines of “WTF?” or “What would Ernesto say?” Despite images of the new bike leaking a week before the official launch, it seems that time did nothing to temper the shock for some for whom the Y1Rs is simply too great a departure from the Colnago of old.
And who could blame them? The Y1Rs is nothing if not wild. With a bayonet fork steerer, wheel-hugging tubes, a handlebar that’s akin to Pogačar’s arms-aloft, take-a-bow celebration, and those seat tubes (yes, plural), it looks, as several online comments had it, like the result of a ChatGPT prompt for an amalgamation of the wildest-ever aero bikes.
The question is: why? Why does it look like this? Is it aero or simply show? Why are there design cues like the split seat tubes or gull-wing handlebar? Why – for a brand as image-conscious as Colnago – would you even have a polarising bike like the Y1Rs when Tadej Pogačar won practically everything on a V4Rs? I’ve been in Benidorm, Spain at the UAE Team Emirates training camp over the past few days to answer those whys. While there are no bikes to ride (even the team frames are only still arriving in dribs and drabs), I was able to talk with staff at Colnago and the team who were involved in the new bike. Many questions are yet to be answered, but here’s what I learned.
Not a Concept
What Colnago wanted to explain to the assembled press was that the Y1Rs is its solution to the question of optimal race performance. It’s not the result of a ChatGPT prompt, but rather a “data-driven” design process with a hefty dose of team demands. Whether its solution is accurate or effective, only time and testing will tell, but it’s a solution Colnago landed on following a two and a half year process of modelling, CFD testing, wind tunnel validation, re-modelling, and re-testing, all while incorporating WorldTour team feedback.
Significantly, Colnago tells me the Y1Rs is not the company’s overall future direction; it is not some new design language it will apply to all its new bikes, especially not any forthcoming new C-series bike, and it is definitely not for everyone. They even told me the wind tunnel results are all lies when it comes to real-world performance, and they never tell the riders how much faster a new bike tests. All of that raises a number of questions, including how Colnago knows the new bike is faster, and whether this is a consumer-focused model at all or is effectively what Colnago would make if the UCI permitted prototype-only or formula-spec bikes in the WorldTour.
While the C68 and V4Rs are both iterations of the preceding C-series and V-series bikes, the Y1Rs is not an evolution of Colnago’s previous aero bike, the Concept, it is an entirely new platform for Colnago free from the responsibility to adhere to any notional heritage and made possible thanks to a relaxation in the UCI rules. The design brief was to build “the fastest possible bike for the Colnago-sponsored teams.”
Asked specifically what that means, Colnago’s head of product, Davide Fumagalli told Escape Collective, “The team’s input was heavily considered throughout the design process,” but that even though aerodynamic efficiency is clearly the frame’s hallmark, it wasn’t the only priority for the team: comfort, stiffness, and in-race practicality (like the use of round bottles rather than aero versions) were also highly valued.
Colnago made much ado about the Y1Rs aero concept, the development process behind it, and the validation and testing methods. And the details they shared made clear that the new bike was the product of an expensive and time-consuming R&D process.
Was it worth it? It’s hard to say. Colnago put hard numbers to the Y1Rs’ efficiency while also claiming that wind tunnel testing is never fully representative of the real world. This being the bike industry, that caveat doesn’t stop Colnago from claiming the Y1Rs is “the most aerodynamic UCI-compliant road bike in the WorldTour.”
There’s some understandable whiplash there for bike racing fans considering that just 18 months ago Colnago came under fierce criticism by Tom Boonen for the supposed aerodynamic inferiority of its bikes. There’s also some whiplash for Colnago which is now being criticised for addressing that perhaps too effectively, by making a bike that’s aesthetically polarising. It’s hard to know how Colnago can satisfy both of those competing critiques. Whether its “fastest” claim is true or not (or whether it’s even knowable) is TBD. What’s not up for debate is how radical the new design is.
Narrow is the new fast
Where else to start but right up front?
The Y shaped integrated bar and … stems(?) are specifically designed to reduce frontal area and flow detachment through the now open centre area when compared to Colnago’s CC.01 handlebar from the V4Rs and C68. Key to the entire concept is the stem, which can only be described as a direct mount, with four bolts securing it directly to the bayonet external fork steerer. While still a prototype (the four bolts will be hidden beneath a cover on the final production version), Colnago claims this direct-mount approach is crucial in not only enabling the overall design but also in retaining stiffness.
A bayonet-style fork, which sees the steerer run externally in front of the head tube, is by no means new; Look was already using such a design in the 90s, and many others have adopted the concept since, including Colnago’s own TT1 time trial bike.
Colnago says it opted for the bayonet fork on the Y1Rs because it minimized the bike’s frontal area by reducing the head tube width and using smaller headset bearings, without compromising stiffness. In fact, the Y1Rs frontal area is 19% down on the V4Rs and those headset bearings are just 19 mm on the upper (less than an inch) and 30 mm lower diameter – according to Colnago, the smallest commercially available headset bearings. But despite that, Colnago claims there are no stiffness or durability concerns on the Y1Rs front end thanks to the bayonet design.
Much like the four bolts on the stem, the headset preload is currently still a prototype. Colnago will bring a revised version to the production versions which it claims will be easier to adjust and should also prove ever so slightly lighter, but will require new moulds, further adding to the development cost of the Y1Rs.
There are no certainties in aerodynamics, but the narrowness of the new front end seems a safe bet, dramatically reducing as it does the A component of CdA. The bayonet fork is also much more pointed than a head tube housing a traditional round fork steerer could be. Colnago claims this further improves the aero profile of the front end, as designers speculate that the small gap in the transition from the bayonet steerer to the actual head tube could even act like a trip, helping flow stay attached to the head tube behind the steerer.
Speaking of head tubes, I had commented when the Y1Rs leaked on the seemingly odd decision to adopt a bayonet fork steerer but not then maximise the depth of the head tube. But Fumagalli explained that in all its testing Colnago didn’t see any benefit in making the head tube any deeper than it is, explaining the deeper head tube is heavier, and isn’t any faster at anything other than 0° yaw which the riders never actually experience in the real world. That is at odds with what I’ve heard from several other manufacturers over the past few years who all claim a deeper head tube is another safe aero bet but, as we’ll see, Colnago’s development process was a step outside industry norms.
The fork legs are equally interesting. While not obvious from the photos, upon seeing the bike in person the legs look almost like a backwards NACA profile. On closer inspection it’s clear they actually feature a more rounded and smoothed trailing edge. They remind me a little of early attempts at aero-bladed alloy forks, partly thanks to the depth and shape, and partly thanks to the trailing edge positioning of the dropout. Colnago claims this trailing edge profiling aids in helping flow remain attached for longer, straightens the flow off the fork legs, and is especially effective at higher yaw angles.
At first I thought Colnago meant the fork legs divert flow onto the down tube, but this is not the case; they are simply hoping to straighten the flow off the forks, but that down tube is, according to Colnago, still critical to the Y1Rs aero concept.
As some brands move the down tube ever closer to the front wheel, and others move it further away, Colnago claims the optimal solution is to do both. Fumagalli said Colnago’s testing highlighted a benefit in an upper section of the down tube that tightly hugs the front wheel before stepping sharply away from the front wheel and opening up a gap behind the wheel.
Colnago’s insight, it says, is that it found the flow over, around, and off the front wheel and the lower pressure zones behind it changes at different heights behind the wheel. Colnago placed the down tube to closely follow the curvature of the upper section of the front wheel where it identified a lower pressure zone, but opted to pull the tube away from behind the lower section of the wheel where it observed slightly higher pressures and smoother flow.
So confident is Colnago in its testing and final down tube design it boldly claims it is confident that “this solution is the final word on the optimal down tube configuration within the limits of current UCI regulations.”
Finally, Colnago has gifted the Y1Rs with up to 32 mm of tyre clearance. While this is hardly surprising given we have measured Pogačar’s Continental tyres at 32 mm on his Enve rims at the Tour de France, Colnago did develop the new bike around a 28 mm tyre and so this bigger rubber the reigning champion tends to use will reduce this gap between front tyre and down tube even further.
Somewhat surprisingly, Colnago has opted for round bottles, foregoing any aero gains an aero bottle might have offered. Asked why it did this in such a performance-at-all-costs bike when other manufacturers are increasingly adopting aero bottle designs, Fumagalli admitted Colnago had left some aero gains on the table, but the round bottles were a non-negotiable with the team, who want to keep feed logistics simple in the complex environment that is WorldTour racing.
Fumagalli has not ruled out bringing an aero bottle design to market for consumers who may be may open to such designs, but I still can’t help but feel Team UAE Emirates is missing a trick here had Colnago been able to deliver a bottle and cage that are both aero-optimised but also compatible with traditional round bottles. My own testing indicates a small but meaningful reduction in drag moving from a round bottle to an aero-optimised bottle at just 35 km/h; the benefit could be much greater at race speeds.
The bottle cage Colnago did go with also hides the battery port inside the down tube – a configuration the designers landed on after the team reportedly demanded any new bike must allow for Di2 battery swaps in under two minutes on the roadside, something it claims the team has to do on a regular-ish basis. The practical import is that, while technically speaking any bottle cage will fit the Y1Rs, buyers should really use the Colnago-designed cages to lock that battery in place and hide it away.
One final aero hack before we get onto the seat tube: Colnago placed two screw bosses on the underside of the driveside fork leg, which will allow the team to place a timing chip mount under the fork which will then in turn hide the chip behind the bulkier dropout; it’s a tiny hack, but I liked it.
Why the Y?
And finally, the seat tube, or should I say, seat tubes. Undoubtedly the most unique feature of the new bike, I’ve saved it for last as we work through the aero interventions simply because Colnago doesn’t see it as an aero aid, although did say it could provide some aero gain. Instead, increased vertical compliance and in turn rider comfort were the primary goals for the offset seat post design with a particularly slack-angled upper portion.
While the lower portion of the seat tube follows closely the curvature of the rear wheel and is entirely a design element intended to improve aerodynamics in this area, it’s from there – where the tube turns radically back up to the top tube and the second, much slacker-angled (65°) portion of the seat tube – that the compliance comes from. This entire portion is designed to flex and thus aid in compliance. While I didn’t ride the Y1Rs, Colnago has enabled so much flex in the entire seat post and upper seat post cluster that I can easily feel it just by placing one hand on the top tube and pushing my body weight down into the rear of the saddle with the other.
As we speculated when the Y1Rs was leaked, the whole design is only possible thanks to the relaxation in the UCI’s frame design rules. Under the new regulations, manufacturers must fit the seat tube within an 80 mm-wide rectangular conformity box and be able to draw a straight line from the bottom bracket to the top of the tube. Crucially though, the regulations also state the seat post “may be attached to the frame anywhere on the seat tube and/or top tube.” As such, although Colnago can’t draw a straight line from the bottom bracket through both the lower seat tube and the seat post attachment area on the top tube, the design is permissible because Colnago says (and the UCI accepts) the seat tube ends at the rear wheel, and the upper section on the top tube is simply the seat post.
It is quite remarkable, so much so I wonder if it may be too much, especially for heavier riders on rougher roads. The seat tube and seat post cluster are also incredibly thin, again for aero gains. But the carbon wall thickness at the seat tube opening for the seat post is thicker than anything I’ve ever seen on this area. Colnago say this thickness helps with the minimal seat post length actually inside the frame. There’s also a stopper inside the seat tube to ensure the seat post doesn’t slip down and damage the inside of that seat tube cluster.
Colnago admits it was a complex and challenging design to deliver, and all that has me wondering if there is any reduced weight limit associated with the new frame due to this system, but the team is keen to stress the weight limit (120 kg / 265 lb for the rider and bike combined) remains unchanged from the V4Rs.
Asked if there is risk such an extreme design starts failing in use, Fumagalli said there is always a concern about failures but the team is confident in its testing which, as you would expect, goes above and beyond the ISO requirements both in the weight applied and the repetitions.
Fit to be fast, but hard to fit?
As always, we take any aero saving claims with a pinch of salt, but If there is one element of the new bike gives me confidence the Y1Rs could be a bike I like, it’s the geometry chart, specifically the steering geometry.
First off, Colnago has increased the reach:stack ratio at the team’s request, meaning the bike is now longer and lower than the V4Rs. This is a common pro request, but I do sense a trend shift as riders realise the same higher-is-faster position most have adopted on a TT bike can also be utilised on a road bike. The Y1Rs creates a particularly aggressive rider position and with little in terms of stem height adjustment as mentioned earlier, some riders could run into fit issues. Colnago has also adopted t-shirt style sizing for the first time on a Colnago road bike, primarily because there is no traditional seat tube to measure the way Colnago does to create sizing for its other road bikes.
Technically speaking, Colnago has also steepened the seat tube angle if comparing a set saddle height on similar-sized frames, but in reality with such a slack seat post angle, the effective seat tube angle is greatly dictated by changes in saddle height and could vary dramatically from rider to rider.
All that aside though, it’s the steering geometry that caught my attention. Colnago has increased the head tube angle and created four different forks with offsets (aka rake) ranging from 42.5 mm to 55 mm for the five different frame sizes to ensure a similar, albeit not identical, trail figure across the size range. (On other road bikes Colnago has just one 43 mm offset for the entire size range.) These new fork rakes and resulting trail figures make a significant difference at the outermost ends of the size range.
Colnago says this was in response to team riders requesting a snappier, faster-handling bike, especially in the sprints. The design team also said it paid particular attention to keeping the wheelbase as short as possible, again in a bid to deliver that responsiveness the riders requested. While I haven’t yet had a chance to ride the Y1Rs, it seems from the geometry chart the bike should at least deliver that.
Finally, Colnago did ever so slightly drop the bottom bracket height, but was reluctant to go too far on a bike both designed around 28 mm tyres and conscious that some riders will still prefer 175 mm cranks. That said, on a bike with so many major compromises and concessions in the name of outright performance, and in an era when more riders are trending towards 170 mm and shorter crank length, I’d have liked to have seen that bottom bracket height dropped lower again and maximise the aero gains from dropping the entire rider lower.
The sizing is also both quite limited and “intentionally confusing.” The two bar widths (377 mm and 397 mm) are at the team’s request, as riders didn’t want or need narrower options. The five half-sized stem lengths (95 mm, 105 mm, 115 mm, 125 mm, and 135 mm) are an intentional move to try to force customers to use Colnago’s new online fit calculator to determine their size.
Fumagalli explained the Y1Rs is a very different fit and if riders simply ordered their usual stem, they could end up with the wrong size. Instead, the fit calculator takes a rider’s existing fit measurements and recommends the exact frame size, bar length, seat post type and precise cut length, etc. That said, I can’t help but think naming the stem sizes XS to XL or even just 1 to 5 would have further guaranteed customers had to use the online tool.
That said, even the production version will be limited to just 25 mm of stem height adjustment. Again, if it wasn’t already obvious, on such an inflexible bike with proprietary bars, seat posts cut to length, and minimal adjustment all over, proper sizing is absolutely critical, and resale could be a problem in future.
What’s it all worth?
Colnago went into great detail about its R&D process, and while there are many questions around that, one thing that was abundantly clear was that it was fantastically expensive (at least by bike industry standards). So I started by asking Fumagalli whether, given the countless hours of wind tunnel testing and CFD analysis, this new approach was only possible thanks to Colnago’s new Abu Dhabi-based owners, Chimera Investments LLC (which itself is owned by the sovereign investment company the Royal Group).
Yes and no was the answer back: The new owners didn’t give the design team an unlimited budget to throw at a new bike, but due to the team’s (and Colnago’s) standing in the Emirates, the design team had access to “all the facilities and resources of the UAE.” In particular, both Fumagalli and the press materials on the new bike repeatedly referenced the new collaboration with Khalifa University (Abu Dhabi), building on the existing work done with Politecnico di Milano in Italy. (Khalifa is less than a decade old but its engineering program is already well-regarded; Politecnico is the largest science and technical university in Italy and ranked as its best engineering program.)
Through those academic partnerships, Colnago says it was able to identify a discrepancy of up to 30% between standard CFD models and wind tunnel testing. To address this discrepancy and develop a more reliable CFD model the design team, aided by the universities, turned to a multi-step process of wind tunnel testing and validating its CFD simulations.
Step 1: Print a prototype frame and drill 70 micro-holes to accommodate pressure sensors positioned across the fork, cockpit, head tube, and down tube. These locations, identified via CFD simulations, cover areas of both attached and detached flows.
Step 2: Mount 70 tiny pressure taps to said tiny holes with 70 thin tubes internally routed all the way from each hole through the frame and out the rear non drive side chainstay to a separate machine that measures and records pressure at each tap during testing.
Step 3: With the sensors in place, test each prototype frame in the wind tunnel with the sensors measuring the air pressure on the surface of each tube at each hole location. The goal here was to measure absolute pressure and identify flow separation points under varying wind speeds and yaw angles, creating a detailed pressure map on each tube – a novel approach in cycling, but commonly employed in automotive and bridge design.
Step 4: Compare the pressure measurements from the frame to the simulated pressure generated by the CFD model. That model was then updated to reflect the measured values by adjusting the mesh (the tiny building block-like cells that fit together to create the virtual test object), turbulence models, and boundary conditions of the simulation thus reducing the discrepancy between simulation and real-world wind tunnel results. Or so the theory goes.
If that sounds like a lot of work, it is, and more astonishingly, Colnago repeated steps 1 to 4 across dozens of different 3D-printed prototypes (“It’s better not to count,” said Fumagalli, but when pressed he estimated a total of 50-60). Each of those prototypes was painstakingly drilled out and fitted to house those tiny pressure sensors for many, many sessions of wind tunnel testing. Colnago says that data helped identify where airflow behavior in the tunnel differed from CFD projections, which allowed it to refine its computer modeling. Two fully rideable prototypes were also built, and Colnago created open moulds for three sizes for testing, a remarkable (and expensive) step to take this early in an R&D process.
So was that expense worth it? The net result is that Colnago now claims to have reduced its CFD-to-wind tunnel discrepancy to just 15%, half of what it had found with some other models. A 15% margin of error between tested and modeled data sounds huge. And that figure is high compared to automotive or aerospace standards, where 10-15% is deemed only reasonable. But in context of cycling, where CFD is relatively new, computational power is limited, and wind tunnel testing can be influenced by a dozen different variables, that’s actually pretty good. The trouble is that Colnago can measure the discrepancy, but it doesn’t know where the error stems from.
Factors such as mesh resolution (finer meshes are more accurate but exponentially more computationally intensive), boundary conditions, turbulence models, Reynolds numbers, and wind tunnel setup all influence CFD-to-wind tunnel comparisons.
The cycling industry also operates with tighter resources than automotive and aerospace companies, and even Colnago’s “no-expense-spared” approach likely faced computational limits. Additionally, many cycling CFD models simplify elements like spokes, which impacts accuracy, not to mention the challenges of modelling turbulence. Even the 70 pressure sensors used – while extensive – provide only a limited resolution of airflow across the frame.
While Colnago’s model improvements are significant and commendable, a fundamental truth remains: although it can measure a 15% discrepancy between CFD and wind tunnel results, the exact source of the error is still unknown. But Colnago is confident the bike is the fastest in the peloton.
That’s because, as you might expect, Colnago conducted extensive testing of the Y1Rs against competitor bikes and its own V4Rs model, using wind tunnel tests with a mannequin to simulate real-world riding conditions. The testing was performed at speeds of 35 km/h, 45 km/h, and 50 km/h, with the latter included specifically because it is now deemed the most relevant for professional racing with the increase in racing speeds of late (fun note: Colnago is using 55 and 60 km/h in testing early concepts of its next generation time trial bike).
Colnago also used a 3D-printed 1:1 rider mannequin that I was assured was not Tadej Pogačar due to his unique bike fit position. While no solution is perfect, Colnago claims using a mannequin ensures more accurate repeatability over a human, who is prone to ever-so-slight positional changes that can have huge impacts on the testing results. The team also used a standalone bike test to ensure results were coherent with each run with the mannequin.
Continuing with what you might expect, and no prizes for guessing, but Colnago’s testing shows the Y1Rs is much faster than the V4Rs and even the “best competitor,” to the tune of 20 watts versus the V4Rs at 50 km/h.
| Power output needed to travel at 50kph | Bike with Mannequin | |
| Power 0° [W] | WAD [W] | |
| Y1Rs | 395 | 474 |
| V4Rs | 415 | 499 |
| BEST COMPETITOR | 396 | 482 |
But as with all things aero, claims are highly variable depending on the input parameters. One of those is yaw angle. Weighting yaw angles – rather than plucking the best single angle performance – is considered industry best practice and Colnago did that, but used its own yaw weighting. The company says it then took the fastest bike at each yaw angle and composited them into a single theoretical “best competitor” superbike, and then compared the Y1Rs to all of those respective best yaw angles. Colnago claims the Y1Rs is faster than all these previous bests across all their individual best yaw angles. Granted the margin varies and is much smaller at some yaw angles, but it is nevertheless a lofty claim.
Applying its weighted yaw drag to that testing, Colnago claims the Y1Rs is 8 watts faster than that theoretical “best competitor” with the mannequin at 50 km/h with two bottle cages and one downtube bottle.
What you might not expect is that Fumagalli told us the aero testing is “all lies” when asked if the results are representative of real-world performance. What he meant is that while Colnago says the bike tests faster in the wind tunnel, all bets are off once an individual rider takes it outdoors. In fact, he added, the company does not tell the team riders how much faster the bike tests (although, having just disclosed it here, that may be something of a fig leaf).
So how does Colnago know the bike is faster, and specifically as fast as it claims? The short answer is it doesn’t. But Fumagalli insists: if something is faster in the tunnel it is likely faster outdoors. They just don’t know by how much as it will even perform differently for various riders. It all comes down to the variability of the real world and individual humans on the bikes.
Proof lies in performance
Other questions remain even for the pros for whom this bike is designed. Colnago claims the bike is as stiff while climbing and stiffer for sprinting than the V4Rs, but it does so based on proprietary dynamic stiffness tests it devised, not industry-standard protocols like the static Zedler test.
Given some experiences I’ve had with ultra-narrow, aero gain-chasing frames, I do wonder if that Y seat tube cluster and ultra-thin profiling will prove just as stiff in the real world as it did in the Colnago-specific testing. The same question could be levelled at the ultra-narrow bottom bracket and aero-profiled down tube. Will they sustain all the rage of a Pogačar attack, not to mention a top sprinter laying down the watts? Only time will tell.
There are so many aspects of the bike that are purpose-built to the team’s demand, which in turn could make it a much more difficult bike for the regular paying customer, like the agressive geometry and complicated headset, but in other ways leaves them short changed, such as with the lack of aero bottles. Developing a bike for the best team in the world who also happen to have the best rider is smart and only to be expected. But it does have me thinking that Colnago is kind of snookered if the team doesn’t adopt it en masse.
The Y1Rs is effectively a bike that Colnago would make for its WorldTour team if the UCI commercialisation rule didn’t exist. The fact it is for sale is largely down to those commercialisation rules, and although Fumagalli claimed pre-orders are well above expectations (the starting price of US$13,151 is, all things considered, competitive to other aero bikes), I’m left feeling Y1Rs customers could end up with the equivalent of buying an F1 car: high performance but very costly and impractical to live with.
The bike’s public reception could hinge at least in part on the team’s. Throughout my three days at the UAE Team Emirates training camp, I observed numerous instances where riders and staff seemed at best ambivalent about the new bike.
Asked about his Milan-San Remo ambitions and if the new bike would help, Pogačar could have easily said yes; instead he accepted that for sure an aero bike helps but first he didn’t think an aero bike was the most important thing, pointing instead to comfort and a bike that climbs and descends fast, and specifically referenced the importance of handling. Credit for voicing his honest thoughts, but there was a glaring omission of any excitement towards the new bike.
Team staff members were equally circumspect when approached for thoughts about the new bike. When asked where the Y1Rs might be most effective, the answers were hedged with caveats about handling or that it might not work for every rider.
Finally, I didn’t observe any riders actually riding the new bike. I was not privy to exact training plans, but much of the rides seemed to be short (by pro standards) three-hour spins. That’s common for December training camps, which are generally low-stress, low-mileage affairs, ideal opportunities for getting used to a new bike. But even with a number of fully built Y1Rs bikes available, riders always chose their familiar V4Rs bikes, even on a short Tuesday ride where the press were allowed to follow in cars.
Colnago says that the new bikes were late arriving to team camp (sizes XS and XL were not available at all). A saddle sponsor change meant riders were trying seat models from the new partner. And the Y1Rs’ strict fit restrictions, like cut-to-fit seatposts leaving just 15 mm of post-cut adjustment, and just 25 mm of stem height adjustment, may have had riders reaching for the familiar V4Rs to reduce the variables when trialling a range of new saddles. But since the team camp doubled as the Y1Rs launch, the cautious, arms-length reception both in word and action was curious.
Some of that may be simple tradition, the reflexive instinct to stay with what’s known. But never do I recall a team failing to rave about their sponsor’s new product, let alone not even bothering to use it. Either way, Colnago seemingly has a job on its hands converting the team it made the new bike for to use that new bike.
Having not yet ridden the bike, there are still many questions to the Y1Rs. Colnago has given its whys and reasoning, but until the time comes that I do get to ride it and review it, there are only two certainties: 1) Colnago was damned if it did and damned if it didn’t with a new aero bike. If the team start using it and keep winning like they do, Colnago will quickly forget that early public backlash over the Y1Rs’ polarising looks. And 2) the dedicated aero bike is alive and well, with more to follow in the new year. I can’t help but think the UCI must be hating that its rule simplification opened the door to a whole new raft of aero bikes. The Y1Rs may not even be the most radical. If those cries of lament continue, they are probably coming from Aigle.
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