ALL IN THE BLUEPRINT

How do bike designers create a machine that ticks the endurance, gravel or aero boxes? James Bracey finds out

- James Bracey

Wouldn’t it be boring if all bikes looked the same? There was a time when that was the case but as designers have striven to tailor performance to specific needs, that homogeneous vision has splintered into a myriad of more targeted machines.

In some ways, the more recent flock of race bikes has seen some of that splintering dissipate – the traditional race bike has assimilated aspects from aero machines and tyre clearance increases for added versatility: just look at the current Specialized Tarmac and its close proximity to the Venge.

But designers looking to fulfil a certain need will still tailor their creation to the demands of a certain genre. So what defines an aero bike from, say, an endurance-oriented machine or even a gravel bike?​

AN AERO BIKES

An aero bike is designed to be the fastest and most efficient drop-bar bicycle design. The key aim is to get the rider from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

In order to do this designers aim to minimise the effect of drag by creating a frame that allows air to flow around it more effectively. At the same time, they need to balance the proportions and tubing profiles to ensure weight and overall aesthetics are also taken into consideration.

Ribble, Scott and many other bike designers use CFD (Computational Flow Dynamics) software to analyse performance before bringing a design into the real world, and wind tunnel testing to optimise airflow over the bike and rider.