More on Cervelo's superbike S5

On Sunday 26th of June I wrote a post on the new Cervelo bike, a post that turned out to be very popular. This was, at least to my knowledge, the first time the Cervelo S5 FM70 was used in a race.

Big head tube - notice the adjustment barrel for gears- mounted by the bike shop

Today I went into a bikeshop, to check on a bike I have in for maintenance. Suddenly I found myself gazing at the S5 himself, right there. I met a nice guy who works at the shop and we shared some stories about the bike and Cervelo in general. It turns out that the bike is one of only 4-5 bikes in Norway and it didn't even had a price tag. I asked what the cost was but all I got was an estimate. The shop is not allowed to sell the bike until August, allegedly due to some marketing "advice" from Cervelo.

When I first wrote about the bike I said it was a beauty. I was wrong, very wrong. It is not a beauty, it is a beast. Of all the road bikes I've seen, I can say without hesitation that this is the one built solely with the purpose of being fast. I know it is a cliché, and that every bike in the world is built for that purpose, but that is my general impression after seeing it up close and personal. Every detail screams it loud. I don't know if I would buy it, simply because it seems very uncomfortable to ride, a very aggressive bike indeed. Now I might be wrong because I didn't ride it.

That is some sized bottom bracket

The detail in this bike is thoroughly thought through (3 times in a row there..), and it is the detail I took pictures of. As you can see on the picture below, the downtube has been shaped to help the air flow around the water bottles.

Aero focus to the detail - waterbottles

My favorite part is that the seatstays seems to swallow the rear brake, letting the air flow around them as the bike is moving. Very clever.

The seatstays force the airflow around the rear brake

Aero seat tube

Large chainstays - the wheels could been better - not Gerard Vroomen's & co's fail though.