The 2024 race season is just about over bar a few exhibition criteriums in the coming weeks, but already thoughts are turning to next year's race calendar at Cyclingnews.
The off-season often brings equipment and sponsor changes, and Uno-X will swap Dare bikes for Ridley next year. An image surfaced online today, shared by the Cyclingspy Instagram page, of what appears to be a new Ridley bike setup session for the team's riders.
We only have a single image to go on and zero information, but it appears it was shared by a rider and then deleted The Cyclingspy Instagram account which reports on pro cycling tech then shared it in a post, which is why we can still see it now.
Belgian brand Ridley has released several new models in the last couple of years. We covered the prototype bike at last year's edition of the Dauphiné which became the Falcon RS lightweight aero bike.
The do-it-all all Grifn RS launched this summer, and just a few weeks ago an aero gravel race bike named the Astra RS which was ridden to fourth place at Unbound launched. A bike that Tech Editor Josh Croxton used to good effect at the British National gravel championships, building himself a gravel superbike for the event.
The current Ridley aero race bike is the Noah Fast, a longstanding model that has seen multiple updates and refinements and is a model which has taken a number of big wins over the years.
This new machine looks to be different from the current Noah fast, and actually has a few similarities with the current Uno X Dare aero bike. The standout feature is the massive squared-off headtube junction, but there's also an aero profiled fork, low headtube and squared-off down and top tubes. Ridley has access to its own wind tunnel and it's probably fair to say that if this is indeed a new race bike, it will have spent some time in the tunnel.
Cyclingnews has approached Ridley for comment, but as yet has received no response.
What do Uno-X ride now?
Uno-X riders currently race on Dare race bikes, we covered Alexander Kristoff’s Dare prototype at Paris Roubaix earlier in the year, and the mode has recently been made available to the public as the Velocity Ace. It’s an aggressive-looking bike that looks fast standing still.
The Velocity Ace, like other aero bikes on the market, takes advantage of updated UCI rules to design a deep, aggressive head tube, something that appears to feature on the new Ridley bike as well.
