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TECH NEWS
Pro Bike: Aqua Blue Sport’s 3T Strada in race trim
Easily the most controversial pro cycling tech news this year is the fact that UCI Pro Continental outfit Aqua Blue Sport will be racing the brand new 3T Strada, a bike that bucks convention with a frame designed entirely around wide tyres, disc brakes and a single ring drivetrain. Traditionalists be damned…
You can read all about the 3T Strada in our indepth review here, so rather than go over it all again, have a read of that article for the full lowdown and our verdict on this controversial new bike. And in case you missed it, this bike won our recent Bike of the Year 2017-18 Award. Yes, it really is that good.
These are the first official pictures we’ve seen of the bike, following a few sneak previews on social media. The radical bike is painted navy blue and gold to match their team kit, with a gold shamrock on the top tube being a nice nod to the title sponsors roots. It’s a pretty good looking bike I reckon, what do you think?
The team is sponsored by SRAM so it’s a Force 1x11 drivetrain, which combines mechanical gears with hydraulic brakes. There’s the company’s Quarq power meter crankset for measuring and tracking power during training and racing.
Gear wise, it appears the team is taking full advantage of the available chainring options, which stretch from 38t up to 54t variants - we expect they’ll choose different chainrings to match the particular terrain of any race or stage they’re competing on.
It’s the same with the cassette, with a choice of any regular 11-speed cassette such as an 11-36t, but we could see them using 11-28t on flatter stages where closer ratios are wanted. And for mountainous terrain, they have SRAM’s massive 10-42t cassette as a backup option.
There’s no word on any future SRAM groupset options. Clearly, they have eTap on the conventional groupset side, and they have 1x12 Eagle for the mountain bikers, so could we see a merging of the two technologies into one wireless 1x12 groupset customised for the road?
Time will tell, but I’d put money on SRAM developing something along those lines. The eTap groupset has been hugely popular and everyone seems to love electronic shifting, and 12-speed cassettes provide a bigger range.
Let’s not forget that 3T is developing two of its own cassettes as well, intended to smooth out some of the gaps on a regular cassette. No sign of that yet but that’s another option they’ll have, though I wonder how SRAM will feel about that?
The two cassettes, Overdrive and Bailout feature a 9-32t range and is apparently designed with a 44t chainring in mind.
The Overdrive cassette features tightly-spaced middle gears and larger gaps towards the higher and lower ends of the range, with cogs of 9-11-12-13-15-17-19-22-25-28 and 32T. The Bailout is biased for sprinters and powerful riders offering 9-10-11-12-13-15-17-19-22-26 and 32T cogs for smaller gaps between the high (hard) gears, and bigger jumps towards the lower end of the range.
That’s a lot of words on the gearing, let’s look at the rest of the kit. As well as supplying the frameset, Italian firm 3T is also providing the wheels and finishing kit. Riders will have a choice of the Discus C60 wheelset pictured here, or a shallower C35 for hilly stages, and for training, they have an aluminium C35 Pros - though with disc brakes there’s really no need to put the carbon wheels away for the winter.
These wheels aren’t the tubular type that we’re so used to seeing in the pro peloton. They are a clincher rim that isn’t tubeless-ready. However, it does seem the team is sticking with the 28mm wide tyres the bike is designed around, with Pirelli’s new P Zero tyres fitted.
The handlebars, stems and seatpost are courtesy of 3T as well, and the saddles come from another Italian company (there’s a theme here) Selle San Marco. The riders can choose from the Aspide, Mantra and Shortfit models.
According to the team, “riders have been rigorously testing their new steeds and offering feedback, with the team eager to see how the 3T Strada lines up in competition.”
It’ll be very interesting to see how the team get on with the bikes, it’ll get its debut at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race on the 25th January. All eyes, including ours, will be on the team and the bikes.
Photos © Karen M. Edwards and thanks to Aqua Blue Sport, got check them out at www.aquabluesport.com
David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes.
Latest Comments
- brooksby 2 sec ago
But it would be absolutely brilliant!
- Mr Hoopdriver 3 min 49 sec ago
I imagine if cycling became a protected charistic they'd find some other out group....
- rjfrussell 7 min 17 sec ago
there is an interesting article on one of the cycling sites- cycling weekly perhaps- that essentially says that breatheability in wet weather gear...
- Owd Big 'Ead 7 min 32 sec ago
Used grass before, to get me out of the shit, during my messenger days, many moons ago.
- peasantpigfarmer 11 min 57 sec ago
Don't know if you fitted the bars yourself Dave. They are poorly finished internally . Outer cables kept jamming internally. Slots and holes poorly...
- qwerty360 19 min 25 sec ago
Iirc the Dutch have research that found in most places legalization reduced incidents! ...
- Backladder 42 min 11 sec ago
What's another 6 points when you already have hundreds?
- OnYerBike 51 min 24 sec ago
Not exactly a building, but car drives into swimming pool: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cp354g1x904o. (No footage of the actual incident, just...
- stonojnr 56 min 39 sec ago
Some kind of cycling vigilante you mean ?
- Bill H 2 hours 12 min ago
Funding the healthcare service is not a binary option between the NHS and whatever the hell you call the US system....
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13 comments
I feel for the riders. They will go back to 2X11 eventually... but first they will have to suffer with 1X11
If they go back to 2x, it won't be on that bike...
How can you develop a cassette to smooth out the jumps between cogs unless you add in more cogs/ratios, this is patently a load of BS. You group some ratios a bit closer together and you end up with even bigger gaps elsewhere, that transitioning can be the difference between getting onto a break or hitting a steep slope off a fast approach in the right gear and not.
In situations where maintaining your cadence in the sweetspot is important it's going to be a real ballache for top end competition riders, fine for liesure riders having a potter out which is really what they want to get their money back from so this is simply a marketing gimmick with no actual benefit. Particularly since dropping chains and gear shifting on a double clanger is not really an issue these days and certainly going to cause you less hassle overall especially if you're simply not where you need to be because you were still finding the right ratio/having to constantly change your cadence thus not being at maximal efficiency as often.
and I still think the frame is uninspiring/fugly, just copying designs seen in early 90s aero frames.
Don't think anyone was claiming that you could do otherwise. We'll see how it goes on the road this season - can't see it being ideal myself either, but this particular situation has not happened before so will be interesting data whatever happens.
Whatever.
So you didn't read the article, "Let’s not forget that 3T is developing two of its own cassettes as well, intended to smooth out some of the gaps on a regular cassette."
maybe you haven't raced or toured or done anything remotely exerting cycling wise but massive gaps between the ratios, even on a spirited club run, touring with a load and quite a few other circumstances as I mentioned is pretty important for efficiency and transition.
looks are always subjective, it's nothing new and IMO it's fugly.
Yes I read the article, and several others regarding the approach the 3T cassettes are taking to cadence when they were announced, e.g.
https://www.bikerumor.com/2017/08/31/eb17-3t-strada-bailout-overdrive-ca...
That sentence in particular was what made me think you hadn't. The pertinent word is "some" - they are moving the group of more closely spaced sprockets around the cassette to try and make things easier in certain situations. They are doing this as the gear layout on a normal cassette is not what they see as ideal in those situations - that's the point. This is also mentioned in this arcticle
..and most of the ones i've seen that touch on this. Given that the number of cogs in the block is constant the staggeringly obvious conclusion was of course that moving things together in one part would widen them elsewhere - your comment made it sound like they hadn't thought of that.
Oh and i've been around bikes for enough decades to know about the effects of gearing on efficiency and comfort, thank you for checking though.
Yeah, it's not directed so much at you - I just get bored on here and elsewhere when people seem to feel their opinion on the looks of a bike or whatever is actually of interest to anyone else.
Hang on a mo', the writer said "It’s a pretty good looking bike I reckon, what do you think?" so surely someone stating an opinion on the bike's looks is valid? BTW, the answer is fugly as sin.
Yeah, missed that - fair point. Still bored by it though...
No more dropped chains, but I'll be interested to see what happens when they puncture. Can't ride on a flat clincher.
Indeed. Aqua Blue made a small fuss last year about running Schwalbe Pro Ones during the classics. Is the switch to Pirelli just for the bucks, or does it suggest they weren't fans of tubeless? I am a fan of tubeless, but I don't have a team car following me. If a team brave enough to go to a 1x aero disc brake isn't brave enough to stick with tubeless, then I hope it's for the money.
I'm all for innovation but I'll be interested to see what losing the inner ring does for them. Lovely looking bike.
All I can see is frustrated mechanics swapping out chainrings.
Bike 'looks' the business.. I'm a big fan of the Aqua Blue colour scheme.. they have the best looking kit IMO.
Clinchers though! eh!