The Madone SLR Disc is the latest superbike from Trek, one of the biggest bike brands in the world. And yet its paint options have generated just as much of a buzz as the frame design itself.
According to Trek, half of all the previous-generation Madones it sold were through its Project One custom programme, where customers could spec the components and paint scheme they wanted.
This time around, the route to purchase has been expanded with the Project One Icon option – a more premium level that includes six pre-configured colour schemes that are even flashier, such as the ‘Prismatic Pearl’ paintjob seen here.
Yet Trek’s road product manager, Jordan Roessingh, assures us the Madone’s new exterior is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what has been improved in this sixth iteration of the Wisconsin brand’s aero bike.
‘The fifth Madone we released in 2015 was such a quantum leap in technologies for aero road,’ he says.
‘It had things like the hidden IsoSpeed decoupler to improve comfort, fully hidden cables and integrated proprietary brakes.
‘But inevitably, as we do at the end of the development of any bike, we almost immediately had a sense of what we wanted to improve on with the next iteration.’
Most obviously that included a move to disc brakes. Unlike several of its competitors, Trek is still committed to rim brake design, having released the new Madone in both rim and disc guises.
However, the brand recognises that the market direction towards disc brakes opened some interesting opportunities that it was able to exploit with the SLR Disc.
‘Adding disc mounts on frames, while they do require some structural reinforcement to manage braking loads, is a much simpler problem to solve than the challenges of rim brakes,’ says Roessingh.
‘The inclusion of the integrated front brake on the rim brake Madone was an incredibly challenging design feature, plus we had to reduce the section length of the down tube to fit in the UCI frame boxes.
‘It was handicaps like this that meant we could design the Madone SLR Disc to be faster than its rim brake counterpart.’
It isn’t even that much heavier, either. Trek claims the Madone SLR Disc 9 weighs 7.4kg, just 300g heavier than the rim brake variant.
We use OCLV 700 series carbon throughout the new frame,’ says Roessingh.
‘The material really is the best-performing composite in terms of strength to weight you can get, and is exclusive in the bike industry to Trek. However, it’s unbelievably expensive.’
Tuned cushion
The 2015 Madone included a version of Trek’s IsoSpeed decoupler technology, a consideration unheard of on aero bikes at the time.
Instead of moulding the seat tube junction as a single unit, Trek ‘decoupled’ the seat tube, fixing it to the rest of the frame with a pivot axle and cartridge bearings, so it was able to flex much more than a traditional construction.
Now Trek has totally redesigned the feature, shifting to an L-shaped design where a flexible leaf spring-style section is positioned in a groove on the underside of the top tube.
‘We took inspiration from our Domane to make the IsoSpeed unit externally accessible, so it can be adjusted,’ says Roessingh.
‘It can be set to be anything from 17% smoother to 21% rowdier than previously.
‘It also allowed us to create a more consistent feel of compliance across frame sizes because the length of the bending component of the IsoSpeed is no longer proportional to the size of the frame.’
Roessingh says ride quality and rider/bike interaction were the areas where Trek saw the most potential for improvement in this latest bike, so the new Madone has undergone changes to its geometry to make it more versatile and adjustable.
‘The Madone SLR uses our new H1.5 fit. This sits exactly halfway between our old H1 and H2 fits in stack, but we now offer different stem angles to create a wider range of positions from the same frame.
‘As the cockpit is now two-piece, the bar width, tilt and stem length are all easier to change too. A comfortable rider is a fast rider.’
Look out for a full review of the SLR Disc in due course, where we’ll determine if this model’s performance really does match its looks.
Trek Madone SLR 9 Disc Project One Icon, £11,650, trekbikes.com