Scott present new F01 aero road bike - this one is Mark Cavendish's

Ever more bike brands are producing aerodynamic road bikes now including Scott who presented their new F01 design at Eurobike. The bike isn’t currently available to the public although Team HTC-Columbia riders, including Britain’s sprint king Mark Cavendish, have been racing aboard the F01 (the only F01 on show was his) and it’ll surely appear in the 2012 line up, we’re guessing, if not before.

The key to the design is the tube shaping. The down tube, seat tube and seatstays are a 3:2 length to width ratio, compared to 3:1 on Scott’s Plasma time trial bike and almost round (ie 1:1) tubes on their lightweight Addict road bikes. The tubes aren’t your standard common or garden aerofoil profile in that the trailing edge has been foreshortened – it’s squared off rather than tapering down at the back, so the overall shape is almost triangular.

This makes us think of the Kammtail Virtual Foil tube design that Trek use on their Speed Concept TT bike. It’s a totally different shape but the concept is broadly similar – the idea is that airflow around the tube mimics that of a larger aerofoil while using far less material. This allows Scott to save grams, increase stiffness and keep within the UCI equipment rules. It’s a design that has been developed with British wind tunnel gurus Drag2Zero.

Scott claim the F01 frame weighs in at 840g (1.8lb) – which is just 5% more than the Addict – with over 20% less drag. They also reckon it’s more aero that Cervélo’s S3 or Felt’s AR bikes, and both lighter and stiffer too. The manufacturers are calling it, “The most versatile bike for the majority of race situations” – aerodynamics becoming particularly important in a breakaway or a sprint, even when Cav is out of the saddle and throwing the bars around.

The F01 comes with fully internal cable routing and the clamp for the 3:2 aspect carbon seatpost hidden away in the top tube/seat tube junction.