There's inevitably a joke about buses here: You wait ages for one and then two (well, three) show up at the same time. Just weeks after Cervélo unveiled a new aero gravel bike, I headed to the Visma-Lease A Bike hotel this morning ostensibly to grab some photos of Jonas Vingegaard's yet-to-be-released Cervélo S5 aero bike ahead of the Tour de France. By a happy coincidence, I met some of the team from Cervélo, and they happily wheeled out a brand new, unreleased R5 climbing bike for me to take a look at too.
On the face of it, it's a similar-looking machine, but having had a pretty in-depth chat with the engineer, there's a lot going on in the name of less weight. It is light - bang on the UCI 6.8kg weight limit even with everything attached to it - and will be used by Visma on the steeper mountains where, I am told, acceleration is an important factor.
