Bike Check: Juliet Elliott’s Hartley Cycles Red Hook Crit race bike

South London-based framebuilder Hartley Cycles - whose work you well have seen at Bespoked or the Design Museum’s Cycle Revolution exhibition two years ago - has produced this stunning track bike for Juliet Eilliott to race at the upcoming Red Hook Crit Series. It features a Columbus Spirit HSS frame with some special details and a custom paint job. 

Hartley Cycles has launched an ambassador programme to provide bespoke frames for riders and endurance cyclists to use in races, and this collaboration with well-known blogger Juliet Elliott is the first.

- Great custom handbuilt frames — from makers who can craft your dream frame

“It's wonderful to have our frames put through their paces by such brilliant individuals,” says Caren Hartley. 

Hartley has produced a bespoke fixed wheel crit race bike using a Columbus Spirit HSS tubeset with a Columbus Futura carbon fibre fork. The down tube is aero shaped and oversized for maximum stiffness when sprinting around a tight and twisting crit circuit. Signature asymmetric bridges and hand-cut silver detail mark out Hartley’s craftsmanship. 

A bespoke frame requires a special paint job, and the red candy fade and gold leaf produced in-house by Hartley looks absolutely stunning. The frame has been built up with FFWD wheels, a SRAM Omnium crankset with a C-Bear ceramic bottom bracket and Brooks C13 Cambium saddle and matching bar tape.

It’s a bike that is sure to turn heads at the Red Hook Crit Series, which starts with Brooklyn on 29th April and stops off in London on 22nd July, Barcelona on 2nd September and finishes in Milano on 14th October.

You can see a bit more about the bespoke framebuilding process in this behind-the-scenes video shot by Juliet below. Best of luck in the race Juliet.