Cervelo

R5 Disc Dura Ace Di2 Road Bike

As a complete bike that’s capable of rolling off the showroom floor and onto the front of the criterium pack, the Cervelo R5 Disc Dura-Ace Di2 Road Bike needs only pedals and a bottle cage or two. And with stiffness boosted at key areas in the frame for increased confidence and performance, the R5 is highly-tuned for any racing on road that fills your calendar. Cervelo also manages to squeeze a few more aerodynamic opportunities out of the versatile design, without adopting the hyper-stiff qualities found on more refined aero bikes.

At the frame, Cervelo fights lateral and torsional forces while keeping the R5 lightweight enough to be considered a go-to frame for alpine stages and endurance KOMs. Placing such an emphasis on stiffness to weight ratio results in a bike that holds momentum well and has exceptional response when you pile on the watts. Cervelo achieves this feat by building up the frame using unique carbon layups and construction techniques, allowing it to reduce the frame's weight while making it stiffer. It uses advanced engineering software like Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to understand better how each layer of carbon fiber is working and if it's being used properly. Its carbon expertise prescribes a specific frame layup by placing hundreds of individually cut plies of carbon in a mold in a specific order and orientation. By precisely cutting these plies, the frame can be made lighter while still achieving the desired strength and reliability.

We can't talk about a racing bike without touching on frame geometry, and the R5 gets Cervelo's Pro Road Fit, which is its lowest frame stack height, and it enables a more aerodynamic riding position. Cervelo claims that roughly 90% of drag comes from air resistance, so Cervelo heeded Team Sunweb's feedback and made the stack low to get as aero as possible on a road bike meant for 5+ hours of racing. In cutting down the aerodynamic drag further, you'll likely notice the decluttered front end, in which cables tuck away into the frame at the earliest opportunity. Cervelo uniquely routes the Di2 wires within the stem, which then exit to vertically insert into a frame-port just behind the rear stem bolts.

Returning Cervelo features include its BBright bottom bracket and Squoval Max tubing. It developed the wider BBright standard to increase stiffness by taking advantage of the real estate at the bottom bracket shell, seat tube, down tube, and chainstay. Additionally, it plays well with all major crank standards. Squoval Max tubing allows the design engineers to use the best attributes of a square and oval shape to improve the bike's ride quality while minimizing weight and maximizing stiffness. And while not as out-and-out aero as its S-Series lineup, its tube shapes, and internal cable routing serve as some aero tricks up its sleeve when you're driving off the front of the paceline. Also, that before mentioned rider position has a more significant impact on drag reduction than any amount of tube shaping or manipulation can achieve. Compared to previous generation R5s, this version has a 44-gram reduction in aero drag, and it's 18 percent stiffer at the head tube and 26 percent stiffer at the bottom bracket, channeling all of your power directly to your rear wheel while descending with confidence.

This particular R5 is equipped with Shimano's top-tier Dura-Ace Di2 disc brake groupset for exceptional shifting precision and performance, and a semi-compact gearing for versatility and efficiency across flat terrain and mountainous racing. Carbon Reserve 50mm wheels with DT Swiss 350 hubs are tubeless-ready for the modern rider and pair well with the 30mm maximum tire width the R5's frame can clear.