The Critérium du Dauphiné, or the Tour Auvergne Rhône Alps to give it its new name, is the traditional place to spot all the latest new tech in use before the Tour de France. The Specialized rumor mill has been running on overdrive in recent weeks, with the launch of the new Crux mere weeks ago to keep the gravel gang happy. Now, though, attention will turn to the road, and what looks to definitely be a new Tarmac SL9, as spotted with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.
The bike was hidden by the team mechanics when they spotted my camera, but thanks to an enterprising attitude, a dark outfit, and a childhood playing hide and seek I was able to sneak into the undergrowth behind the team's hotel car park and get some spy shots to confirm it was the new machine, before making a break for it and trying to get some closer snaps with some success.
Leaked images online abound, including a brief roof rack spot last week after an image was shared online, but in the flesh we can see for sure what the direction of travel is for Specialized’s flagship machine.
It is clearly still an all-rounder, rather than jumping wholesale into the aero market, though there are some clear new concessions to cheating the wind. Given the Tarmac SL8 was particularly fast for an all-rounder in our wind tunnel testing, we suspect this will make the SL9 a very fast machine indeed.
The eye is immediately drawn to the new seat tube, now infilled up to the dropped seatstays to provide a shroud for the rear wheel. This is now very much par for the course on all aero bikes like the Canyon Aeroad, but has the effect of making the silhouette a little more muscular.
The seat stays themselves look a little fatter to me, and maybe the chain stays too, but it's marginal at best. Perhaps there were stiffness demands from pro riders if this was the case, though our stiffness testing revealed the SL8 to be a relatively stiff bike despite being fabricated from relatively silly tubes.
The seat post looks essentially the same as the current model, so it's likely the two may be compatible. It also looks to have the standard Roval Rapide handlebar, as per the current generation, perched above the Speed Sniffer nosecone.
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Speaking of the speed sniffer, this still remains (in fact, the main triangle looks extremely similar in form to the old model), but the fork legs appear to have been deepened, but forwards, such that the leading edge of the fork crown is in line with the protuberance of the head tube. It has the effect of appearing to steepen the head tube angle, much like the very extreme forks on the Factor ONE, though it is suspected that the geometry, if it is changed at all, will only feature minor tweaks. The forks also look to be wider set, too, in keeping with modern trends.
Beyond that it's business as usual, as much as we can tell from a pro bike rather than a shop floor model. No aero bottles that are so often specced to bolster wind tunnel results, and no great lurches to either super light or super aero. We don't have official weights to work with, but with the additional carbon it is entirely possible that it'll be slightly heavier than the old version, though it's probably also still likely to be possible to make under the UCI weight limit in smaller sizes, something all riders will now be hyper-aware of in the wake of Lorena Wiebes’ shock disqualification recently.
Once the race starts, it will be easier to get some better pictures that didn't involve hiding in a bush – the mechanics really didn't want us to see this – so stay tuned for more images in due course.
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