• For more details and tickets go to: cyclisttrackdays.com
Like shows are great things – all those stands packed with lovely, shiny new bikes to look at, lift and tyre-squeeze. But wouldn’t you rather actually ride the bikes?
That’s what Cyclist Track Days are all about. Come along to one of this year’s events and you’ll find a host of the world’s most desirable road bikes just waiting for you to mount and thrash around a purpose-built race track, with no traffic or potholes to worry about.
We’ve got top-end bikes from the likes of Colnago, Bianchi, Cannondale, Pinarello and BMC, with more to be announced.
And each of the brands present will bring a range of models and sizes, so you can spend the whole day blasting around on dozens of different bikes and still not get through all of them.
We’ll even provide lunch and coffee, as well as a packed goody bag to head home with. Plus, you can try out the latest kit from Swiss clothing brand Assos, and fuel up on energy products from Rawvelo.
There are four venues and five dates to choose from, and ticket numbers are limited so don’t hang around.
Take a look below for just a small selection of the bikes that our brands will be bringing to each of the events.
Cyclist Track Days 2019
Castle Combe– 28th April (near Bristol)
London– 18th & 19th May
Fife– 9th June (near Edinburgh)
Leeds– 22nd June
• For more details and tickets go to: cyclisttrackdays.com
Scott Foil
The Foil is Scott’s aero racer and, as the name suggests, it’s something of a blade.
With its deep wedge of a head tube, one-piece bar and stem and a seat tube that wraps around the rear wheel, everything is designed to carve through the air.
That said, there are some concessions to comfort. The original Foil was stiff enough to rattle your fillings, but this iteration uses a clever carbon layup and slightly wider tyres to dampen the harshness of the ride.
And you can’t argue with a bike that’s won Paris-Roubaix.
Model shown: Scott Foil 10 Disc, £4,999, scott-sports.com
Cannondale SystemSix
The recently launched SystemSix is the newest superbike in Cannondale’s line-up and, if you believe its test data, quantifiably the fastest bike in the world.
Making such an immodest entrance into the aero sector of the market required Cannondale to develop several new proprietary components.
The super-wide Knot 64 wheels are a key feature in the hunt for speed, as is the Knot bar/stem combo.
Expect to see this bike winning some big races with the EF-Education First pro team during the 2019 season.
Model shown: Cannondale SystemSix Carbon Dura-Ace, £5,000, cannondale.com
Wattbike Atom
You can’t take this one out for a spin, but with a Wattbike you could ride up Ventoux without leaving your living room.
The Atom rides like a road bike, but can produce the kind of data once restricted to a sports science lab.
It reads power accurately to +/-2% up to 2,000W and connects with third-party apps, so if for example you hook it up to Zwift the resistance will increase as the virtual road goes up.
Add in Polar View, which helps promote efficient pedalling technique, and it’s the ultimate indoor trainer. Only, at the Cyclist Track Days, it will be outdoors.
Model shown: Wattbike Atom, £1,599, wattbike.com
Pinarello Dogma F10
It’s the bike that Geraint Thomas rode to win the Tour de France last year. It’s the bike that carried Chris Froome to Giro d’Italia victory too.
In fact, the Dogma in its various formats has won so many races that we can just about forgive this disc brake version’s name being spelled ‘Disk’ with a ‘k’ (like a floppy disk) instead of ‘Disc’ with a ‘c’ (as it should be).
A fusion of aerodynamics, light weight and impeccable handling, the Dogma F10 is a pure-bred race bike that is sure to be right at home on the twisting courses of our Track Days.
Model shown: Pinarello Dogma F10, £10,250, pinarello.com
3T Strada
The Strada was dreamt up by one of the founders of Cervélo, Gerard Vroomen, and is an original take on the aero-road genre.
The two main tenets of the design are wider tyres and a single chainring.
The thinking is that the comfort of wider tyres can offset a very stiff and efficient frame, and 1x gearing further improves aerodynamics and reduces weight by doing away with the front derailleur and inner chainring.
Detractors argue that the 1x gearing lacks the versatility of conventional drivetrains but, because the bike now runs Sram’s new eTap AXS 12-speed 1x groupset, those fears should be assuaged.
Model shown: 3T Strada Red eTap AXS, £8,990, saddleback.co.uk
Colnago C64
Colnago unveiled the C64 to mark the company reaching the ripe old age of 64.
Its founder Ernesto Colnago still cuts a spritely figure at 87, and he still knows a thing or two about bike design as well.
The C64 is made in Ernesto’s workshop near Milan in Italy, using carbon lugs to link several carbon tubes together.
Colnago has tuned the performance and ride quality of the C64, but also designed in some aerodynamic shapes and even introduced an altogether new bottom bracket standard.
The result is a bike that’s highly rideable, incredibly stiff and aerodynamically slippery.
Model shown: Colnago C64 Super Record, £8,599, windwave.co.uk
Bianchi Oltre XR4 Disc
When Bianchi’s engineers sat down to redesign their flagship racer, they had only one question on their minds: how could they make it faster?
And the answer was threefold. First, make it more aerodynamic. Second, improve braking. Third, make it smoother.
And thus the Oltre XR4 Disc was born, the product of months in the wind-tunnel, the latest disc brake technology and, crucially, a whole new carbon layup called Countervail, a viscoelastic carbon fibre material that absorbs road buzz without diminishing frame stiffness.
The result is an aggressive race bike with incredible levels of comfort that can stop on the proverbial sixpence.
Model shown: Bianchi Oltre XR4 Disc Ultegra Di2, £6,500, bianchi.com
BMC Teammachine Disc
If you make a bike using a supercomputer in collaboration with the world’s largest player in FEN (Finite Element Analysis, used to simulate stresses on objects), chances are it’s going to be pretty good.
The Teammachine is, and then some. The product of tens of thousands of virtual iterations, the Teammachine was a forerunner – and remains so – in the race for manufacturers to incorporate disc brakes into their bikes without upsetting classic racing geometry and adding excess grams.
As such the Teammachine easily troubles the UCI weight limit and handles every bit as adroitly as its Grand Tour-winning forebears.
Model shown: BMC Teammachine SLR01 Disc Three, £6,400, evanscycles.com
Cipollini NK1K
Cipollini bikes, much like the man himself, are typically loud but impressive. The NK1K is no exception, boasting audacious curves and available in numerous lairy colour schemes.
There’s substance behind the style, though.
Using autoclaves at Mario Cipollini’s facility in Verona and three other Italian factories, the brand’s top-end frames are truly and verifiably Italian-made and the NK1K uses super-stiff Toray M46J carbon fibres.
It also borrows the wind-tunnel-tuned tube shapes of the Cipollini Nuke TT bike.
Indeed, with a neat cover over the steerer spacers and rather aggressive geometry stats, the bike could be confused for a TT bike with drop bars, in a good way.
With a low and long front end, this is a bike destined for sprinting, and quickly, just as Cipo would have done back in his racing days.
Model shown: Cipollini NK1K Dura-Ace, £8,500, paligap.cc
Orro Venturi
The ‘Venturi effect’ is to do with the efficient channelling of air, which goes some way to explaining the name of British brand Orro’s aero road machine.
It uses truncated aerofoil tube shapes made from ‘spread-tow’ carbon, a carbon fabric that Orro says allows for a greater number of fibres in a smaller space, reducing weight while maintaining lateral stiffness.
The frame is designed around 28mm tyres, so you get a bit of extra grip and comfort without compromising on outright speed.
Model shown: Orro Venturi Ultegra, £2,599.99, i-ride.co.uk
• For more details and tickets go to: cyclisttrackdays.com
Swift Hypervox
Swift is not a name you’ll see often while out on the club run, but don’t let its relative obscurity cloud your opinion.
The brand has been making high-quality race bikes since 2008, and both its Ultravox and Hypervox models have found particular favour in Cyclist reviews.
The Hypervox is the more aero of the two models, but by the standards of today’s bladed, wind-tunnel-optimised aero bikes, it looks fairly… well, normal.
That, says Swift, is because the brand was more focused on maintaining the ride quality it has become known for, rather than compromising handling in the pursuit of a few saved watts.
Model shown: Swift Hypervox Disc, £4,149, swiftcarbon.com