With victories from cobblestone Tour stages to mass sprints to the World Championships, the S3 is Thor Hushovd’s favorite bike. Aero road bikes seem to be a “trend” nowadays, but for Cervélo and its riders, they are the essence of what Cervelo's do. They offer the advantages of reduced drag while preserving everything else you expect in a good road bike. Not an easy balance to strike, but 15 years of experience doing that certainly helps.
Characteristics:
- Reduced Aero drag to save enrgy
- A low geometry to put yourself in an aero position
- Proper road bike performance, because an aero focus shouldn't compromise lightnes, BB / Torsional stiffness and/or comfort.
TECHNOLOGY
Oversized Bottom Bracket Area
- Big volume and fluent form aligns the carbon fibers with the complex loads in this area
- This increases:
- Side-to-Side BB Stiffness (better power transfer)
- Torsional Stiffness (better handling)
TrueAero Shapes
- Long-tail airfoils with a 3:1 ratio or better create the lowest drag
- Truncation can be useful, for example if flow interacts with another object.
Smartwalll for Carbon
- Carbon strength & stiffness depend on the size, shape, material & fiber direction of each of the 300+ pieces of carbon in a frame
- Cervelo's Smartwall lay-ups are based on 15 years experience and the most advanced tools, including in-house developed optimization software
- Smartwall also puts extra carbon on the sides (far from the center plane) to increase stiffness at little extra weight.
S3 Aero Seatstays
- Special TrueAero shape":
- Profile designed in the direction of the aeroflow (horizontal)
- Different shape on the inside than on the outside (to deal with the spinning wheel)
- Only 10mm wide for maximum compliance (within reason), minimal weight and frontal area
Aero Chainstays- Used on S3 and P4
- TrueAero shapes in the direction of the Airflow
- Especially effective in cross winds.
Aero Headtube
- The narrow section between the bearings reduces the frontal area and thereby the aero drag (which is linearly related to the frontal area)
- Narrowing this area also improves the headtube's aspect ratio (same gusset length divided by a smaller width renders a higher ratio) to get closer to a 3:1 airfoil.
Internal Cable Stops ICS3
- With ICS3, Cervelo continues to lead the industry in internal cables
- No housing inside the frame gives crisper shifting and 200 grams less weight.
- New stainless steel internals with replaceable Teflon liners further reduce the friction.
- Integrated toptube adjuster allows on-the-fly fine-tuning. A first for internal cable systems.