A prototype Orbea aero bike has been spotted ahead of the Tour de France and the designers have been busy with the crayons in an attempt to hide the frame’s aero features.
The Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, formerly the Criterium du Dauphine, is a key warm up race for the Tour de France. As a result, teams will often trial their brand’s new race bike, giving it valuable in-race testing ahead of the world’s most important bike race.
Cube has shown off a new aero bike and Van Rysel seems to have designed a new all rounder for Paul Seixas.
First spotted by BikeRadar, Orbea has brought a very interesting new aero bike to the party, but the brand seems keen to hide the key features of the frame. Yep, those are hand-drawn lines.
Disruptive patterns and shapes are often used by automotive brands as a visual distraction. This prevents rival brands and the media from learning too much about a new design. But, try as they might to hide such secrets, this is plenty that we can learn from these images.
Firstly, the fork is noticeably deeper on leading edge. Orbea looks to have extended its profile forward of the front axle. Given the importance that designers place on leading edge aerodynamics, such as feature shouldn’t be a surprise.
While the upper and lower section of the headset are marked with lines, I can’t see a massive headtube change beyond a little change to the contouring. There is more of a gradual sweep into the underside of the top tube, though the difference to the bike we tested could be in part due to size differences.
A surprising feature, however, can be spotted under the bike, where the bottom bracket shell extends down. Orbea is naturally remaining tight-lipped about the changes, but it could well be that the engineers are tying to shelter the rear wheel as much as possible.
An element of the new bike that surprised me is the svelteness of the bar. Aero bikes often come with deep top sections on the bar which tend to be accompanied by claims of aero savings and additional comfort.
It will be interesting to see if this cockpit design is the final version, or whether the pros ask for more front end stiffness.
While plenty has been added to the bike, one thing seems to have been taken away from the Orca Aero. Look to the bottom of the down tube and you’ll find no storage box under there.
The design was intended to allow riders to hide ride essentials low on the bike in a box that doubled up as an additional aero fairing. However, the UCI took one look at it and banned it from pro races.
Some elements of the design are less clear, but it appears that the 30mm tyre clearance of the previous bike has been improved. This bike had 29mm Vittoria Corsa Pro tyres mounted to the Oquo rims. These feature a 23mm internal rim width, allowing those tyres to ballon slightly.
Given the decent amount of space around the tyres, it seems that 32 or 33mm tyres may be usable.
However, we’ll just have to wait for details on the new bike…
1 thought on “Orbea’s prototype aero bike has a hand-drawn disguise”
A fluoro green posca pen does not disguise, rather it promotes.
Speaking of over promotion, all the new pop up ads on roadcc are intensely annoying and counter productive for the sponsors. Why would anyone think something so annoying would make me want to buy the product?