I always think there’s something reassuring about a bike that’s had many before it bear its name. Specialized has the Allez, Cannondale the CAAD series, Trek the Madone, Giant the TCR, and Wilier the Cento.
It speaks of consideration, faith and solid reputation. Consideration that a manufacturer has tried to create lineage and pedigree; faith that each iteration will be better than the generation before; and solid reputation that if a name has lasted long enough, a bike must be doing something right.
After all, everyone knows a Porsche 911; few will remember the Gordon-Keeble.
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Buon compleanno!
The Cento first surfaced in 2006, built to celebrate Wilier’s 100th birthday – Cento meaning ‘hundred’ in Italian. However, it was 2008’s Cento1 that really established the range’s reputation.
Replete with integrated seatmast and £5,499 pricetag, it was heralded as one of the best all-round race bikes of its time and garnered much praise in the bike press.
In general, success has followed success where the Cento marque is concerned. The SL did much the same as the Cento1 (and was a few grams lighter), the SR was an entire redesign but with similar poise and reception, then the Cento1Air alighted from the aero-road train in 2013. There was one disappointment, though.
‘We made the Cento Uno SR Disc, and we sold zero,’ says Wilier’s international sales manager, Claudio Salomoni. ‘There were supply issues with the disc brake units, but really it is the attitude in southern Europe. It’s, “Why do you need disc brakes? Because it is raining? If it is raining, I just ride tomorrow.”’
Wilier does make disc brake bikes, of course – the endurance GTR and the Montegrappa – but in the Cento10Air (named in celebration of the brand’s 110th birthday) it’s looking for a bike to capture the hearts of the purest racers.
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The stopping power therefore comes from a set of Shimano Ultegra direct-mount brakes. There’s not a huge amount in it when compared to the regular single-bolt mounted version, but modulation is ever so slightly better as the brake calliper is stiffer thanks to each being mounted via its own pivot, thereby turning the frame or fork into a brace for the brake. However, this isn’t the reason Wilier has chosen the system.
‘The brakes mean that we can offer more clearance for wider tyres, but crucially for air flow,’ says Salomoni. ‘The rear stays are much wider apart than usual, as is the fork, aiding airflow between the wheel, frame and fork so the Cento is better aerodynamically.’
Add in integrated ‘Alabarda’ bars and kamm-tail tubes (a truncated tear-drop profile that adheres to the UCI’s 3:1 tube ratio rule) and Wilier claims the Cento10Air is 8% faster than its predecessor, the Cento1Air.
Could I tell if that was true? Well, I rode the Cento1Air when it debuted and was mightily impressed at the time by how fast it felt. Admittedly that was three years ago, but if memory serves then the initial feeling of speed aboard the Cento10Air wasn’t quite so dramatic.
It definitely felt fast compared to my round-tubed training bike, but having just come off the back of the Specialized Venge ViAS (issue 54), the Cento10Air felt fairly normal.
In part that’s down to two things. Firstly, bikes are just getting faster. But also the secret weapon in the Cento’s arsenal isn’t necessarily aerodynamics, but ride feel.
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Ever the stereotype
Just like how 50kmh on a motorbike feels like 100kmh in a car, thanks to the far more connected, visceral feeling you get from riding a motorbike, speed can be deceptive on a road bike.
Enjoy a smooth-riding bike and things seem underwhelming, sometimes even slow, but get on a super-stiff racer and bounce all over the place feeling every shock and you can be tricked into thinking you’re pegging it along faster than you really are.
The Cento, much to its credit, is particularly smooth. It’s still aggressive – at the closest I could get to my correct set up there was still a fairly long drop from saddle to bar – but other than the position I often forgot I was riding an aero bike.
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There is a real relationship between the front and the rear ends, where the fork tracks precisely and the rear follows without complaint. But more than that, vibrations up the seatpost and through the pedals felt on the same level as those that travelled up the steerer tube and through the bars, a trait that makes a bike feel more like a homogenous piece and less like a collection of parts.
In this respect I’d liken the Cento10Air to the Scott Foil (issue 50), an aero bike that coped well enough with the cobbles of Roubaix to help Mathew Hayman to victory. That bike had an endearingly fast, smooth and precise ride, and the Cento10Air is the same. Yet the Cento does manage to juggle a personality all of its own too.
The ride feels very ‘Italian’. As smooth as it is for an aero bike, it still takes some containing on sharper descents or tighter corners due to a slightly twitchy edge.
It’s not unstable but, as I’ve found on similar bikes from Bianchi and Colnago, it takes a bit of getting used to before you master the controls. But once I learned to be a bit more sensitive with my steering input and shifts of bodyweight, such as a dropped knee or a more forward position as when descending fast, the Cento10Air came into its own.
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Make me better
Of course to go down one needs to first go up, and I was ‘lucky’ enough to be faced with several nasty climbs in the Dolomites aboard the Cento (Wilier having chosen to launch the bike in Cortina, Italy).
The initial test ride was eye-wateringly early, the air thin and the roads horrendously steep, but according to Strava I managed to drag myself up the 2,250m Lavaredo in a time that put me in the top 10% on the leader board.
No matter where I ride, I wouldn’t expect to obtain such lofty heights in Stravadom, let alone aboard a bike I’ve never ridden before up something so steep (there are regular stretches of 15%), so it’s testament to Wilier that the Cento10Air managed to paper over my deficiencies as a climber so well.
A weight-weenie might baulk at the idea of 7.51kg bike, but such experiential evidence does make the argument for aerodynamics over weight.
Add that evidence to the rest and the Cento10Air builds quite a case for itself. It’s nimble, smooth, climbs well and has a fair lick of speed. There are faster bikes out there, but few come as close to melding aerodynamics with all-round race bike performance. Plus it’s red.
Spec
| Wilier Cento10 Air | |
|---|---|
| Frame | L |
| Groupset | Shimano Ultegra 6800 |
| Brakes | Shimano Ultegra 6810 direct mount |
| Chainset | Shimano Ultegra 6800 |
| Cassette | Shimano Ultegra 6800 |
| Bars | Wilier Alabarda integrated |
| Stem | Wilier Alabarda integrated |
| Seatpost | Ritchey Cento10 Air custom |
| Wheels | Mavic Cosmic Pro Carbon Exalith |
| Saddle | Selle Italia SLS carbon |
| Weight | 7.51kg |
| Contact | wilier.com |
'There is this great photo of Fabian Cancellara on the start line at the Giro d’Italia, looking under the handlebars of Pippo Pozzato’s bike,’ says Claudio Salomoni, Wilier’s international sales manager. ‘I love this picture, because Cancellara is so puzzled with the bike. He cannot work out where the Di2 box is hidden!’
The bike in question was this, the Wilier Cento 10 Air – or chen-toe deet-chae as the Italians say. It’s the sixth addition to the burgeoning Cento family, which until this summer was led by the Cento 1 Air. Like the 1 Air, the Cento 10 takes its design cues from angular NACA and Kamm tube profiling and low-slung seatstays, but the difference is about more than just a lick of paint and some new bars.
‘The fork and stays have been widened to make the bike faster,’ says Salomoni. ‘There are two ways you can look at aerodynamics on a bike: the track way, where everything is super-skinny and very close together, with the wheels nearly touching the frame; and the road bike, where you need clearances for wider tyres and brakes.
‘On a track bike the gaps between the wheel and frame are so small almost no air can get through, which is good as this air would otherwise create areas of high pressure, which causes drag. Go a bit wider, like on a normal road bike, and the air can go anywhere, so you get more pressure and more drag. But go wider still and you start to reduce the pressure again, so it becomes more aero. So this is what we tried to do with the Cento 10. It’s a simple concept we learn in school!’
As such, the rear seatstays flare proud of the seat tube to create a wide gap between the wheel and the stays. Up front the gap between the legs of the integrated fork is also appreciably wider than most, so to accommodate these characteristics Wilier has employed direct-mount brakes fore and aft.
Wilier claims this wide stance makes the Cento 10 Air 8% faster than the 1 Air. The new Alabarda handlebars also play a part, though Salomoni says Wilier doesn’t yet have the precise numbers to indicate by how much.
Frank engineering
Like a slew of other brands, Wilier has gone down the one-piece stem-bar combo, cast in the in-vogue T shape. Viewed from the front, the Alabarda’s silhouette is wind-cheatingly thin, but from above it’s a mighty-looking piece that looks more like a jet wing than a bike handlebar.
A combination of proprietary spacers and a neat internal clamp means the ensemble sits gratifyingly flush which, given its size, lends itself nicely to housing the Di2 internals.
It’s a slick piece of engineering made all the more aesthetically pleasing by colour-matched graphics – each of the Cento’s four colourways has its own complementary bar. For those wishing to push the palette still further, Wilier will also be offering custom paint through its Infinitamente programme.
The Cento 10 is essentially bigger than its forebear, yet it’s lighter – a claimed 990g for a medium frameset compared to 1,120g for the 1 Air. That’s as you might expect for a next-gen road bike – after all, when was the last time a manufacturer claimed its bike was heavier than before? However, Salomoni is refreshingly blunt about how such feats were achieved.
‘I tell you China is like the Silicon Valley of carbon, in that anything new comes from there. If you can show me an Italian factory that can make frames like they can in China, I want to know!
‘We achieve this new weight working with our factory to refine the lay-ups: how much carbon to use, where to overlap this piece, the orientation of the strands in that piece, and so on.’
Carbon copy
‘It has very little to do with the carbon fibre itself,’ Salomoni says. ‘Anyone who says they have access to special carbon is talking nonsense. We all have access to the same stuff, it is the lay-up where we save the weight, and where it gets incredibly complex to save even just a few grams.’
In this day and age one might question the absence of disc brakes on a bike such as the 10 Air. Salomoni, though, is yet to be convinced. ‘Disc brakes are not aero. Maybe with covers, yes, but the UCI does not allow this yet.’
For now we’re happy with the Cento 10 as is, direct-mount brakes and all. Our first ride in the Dolomites highlighted an incredibly adept road bike with the bonus of aero qualities. For more on our initial impressions of the Cento 10 Air, go to cyclist.co.uk/cento10, and look out for a full test in an upcoming issue.
The sixth addition to the Cento family, the Cento10 takes its design cues from angular Naca and Kamm tube profiling and low slung seat stays found on its predecessor, the Cento1 Air, but this is more than just a lick of paint and some new bars.
The frame has undergone a total reworking, the most obvious elements being the widened seat stays and fork, something Wilier claims helps make the Cento10 8% faster than the Cento1 Air. The idea is the extra-wide areas allow air to flow more easily between the wheels and frame, preventing areas of high-pressure that cause drag. Whatever the theory, in practice that means Wilier has had to opt for direct mount brakes to fit this extra width while maintaining tyre clearances. These not only look clean, but also have a tendency to perform just that little bit better than traditional callipers.
The seat stays have also been lowered, as far as UCI regulations permit (lest bikes start looking like the banned Y-frame designs of yesteryear from Lotus, Trek and Zipp). Again this aids speed, the less material facing the wind the better.
Side on the bike therefore cuts a similar silhouette to the 1 Air, except for one thing: the bars. Wilier has dubbed these the ‘Alabarda’ handlebars, and true to current industry form they are an integrated stem/bar combo with a narrow frontal area but, when viewed from above, are a wide T-shape. The ergonomics of the tops therefore won’t suit everybody, but the compact, shallow drops should be a hit with most.
There can’t be any complaints at the neatness of the cabling and hidden junction box that the Alabarda affords though; side or front there’s barely a cable or black box to be scene. Neither is there an inline cable adjuster for the front mech, as Wilier has tucked this away into a natty little integrated box in the down tube that’s as neat as it is clever.
All in, then, a very promising looking package, especially in the new livery, which unlike Wiliers past is mercifully free of acronyms declaring how integrated the fork is or how carbony the carbon is. Not that I’m retrospectively complaining.
On the up
I rode the Cento1 Air some time ago, and while I can’t remember the specifics, I do remember coming away thinking it was one stiff bike - rigid in pretty much all directions. So first thing out on the road I was struck by how forgiving the Cento10 felt.
Wilier has partnered with Ritchey in creating the seatpost, which has a flattened back to aid flex, and I’ve no doubt this must be a key factor. Yet I can’t help thinking placing the seatstays so low down has the added advantage of having more seat tube on show to flex too. Either way, the Cento10 immediately impressed with a comfortable ride, a feeling which didn’t let up. In fact it continued and morphed into something rather interesting.
Normally you can feel an aero bike up a climb but with the Cento10 there was no such problem
I was lucky enough to trial the Cento10 on some rather steep terrain in the Dolomites, where 45km costs you 1,600m of ascent, and it was only after arriving at the crest of a particularly vertical climb that I realised just what had happened – I’d forgotten I was riding an areo bike. Normally you can feel an aero bike up a climb, a bit of extra weight here, some slight flex in a thin frame there, but with the Cento10 there were no such things to report. That’s not to say it rode like a mountain goat (if anyone has actually ridden a mountain goat, do write in), but it felt entirely normal. It felt like a road bike, plain and simple.
Going back down the climb only exacerbated that feeling. The bike’s turn in through tight hairpins was sharp and accurate, its ability to hold long, low down arcs through fast turns highly dependable. Once again I was struck by just how much the Cento10 handled like a traditional road bike – it felt unfussy, composed and, above all else, very well balanced. Little flicks of hips took the bike merrily through corners, yet big wrenches on the bars or kicks with the pedals elicited the speed and power you’d expect without any flexing between the front and back of the frame.
If there’s one area I’ll have to reserve judgement on, it’s speed. The Dolomites were far too mountainous to discern the flat-road performance of the Cento10. I’d guess at it being pretty quick given my previous experience of the Cento1, and how much this bike shares in that DNA, but for a full report we’ll have to wait until Wilier can ship one over for long term testing.
