Focus Izalco Race Carbon Sora

At this price point I'd typically say go aluminium alloy on the frame front, but wow! This carbon fibre Focus Izalco Race punches well above its weight, confirming that if a designer knows what they're up to you can get an absolute blinder on any budget. Handling, ride quality and above all, fun – it's got it in spades.

• Pros: Excellent frameset, quality components
• Cons: Brakes need a pad upgrade

I ride maybe 25 to 30 test bikes a year and thankfully most of them are very good, but just a few give you that extra little buzz, bringing an uncontrollable smile across your face as you've just chucked it down your favourite descent, nailing every apex, or getting back from a blast of a ride that was hugely satisfying from the moment you left the front door to the second you got back. You don't quite know why, it wasn't necessarily the quickest or most challenging, it just felt right. The Izalco has that gift.

The Ride

First up it just feels faster than it really is. I'd often look at the average speed on the Garmin and sneer, 'you're having a laugh aren't you?' It felt 3-4mph quicker than that; that's just how engaging the Focus is.

It feels buzzy, like a dog in the back of the car waiting for the door to be opened so it can get out and have a good sniff at the surroundings. The Izalco Race wants to be ridden hard and I can think of few better entry-level carbon fibre bikes if you have racing ambitions now or in the future.

> Find your nearest dealer here

The SL frameset is used throughout the seven carbon models in the range right up to the £3,499 model, and that is always a good sign. It's not often you see a 'UCI approved' sticker on a bike just over the £1,000 mark.

For a start the Izalco is stiff and responsive. The geometry is racy, this medium model having a top tube of 552mm paired with a short head tube of 145mm. That gives a stack of 547mm and a reach of 390mm, a ratio of 1.4.

You can get low in the drops or on the hoods and just smash the tempo out, and you feel like you're getting a decent return for your outlay.

It's a good cruiser too, though. You can head out for three or four hours and cover some decent distance without ever feeling beaten up. For such a stiff bike it's never uncomfortable, even with the 25mm tyres pumped up to 100psi, and it'd make a great sportive machine or one for those spirited group rides on a Sunday morning.

Descending is one of the highlights of any ride for me, and this is where the Focus never disappointed. The head angle isn't massively steep at 72.5 degrees, so the steering is kept just on the tameable side of twitchy, allowing you to really let the bike go through the technical sections of the hill.

You get so much feedback from the frame and fork, the little details of what the tyres are up to and how everything is responding thanks to the layup of the carbon. Some frames can feel a bit dead, taking out a lot of the vibration, but you need some of it to let you as a rider know what's going on. The Izalco does this really well, which lets you take a few risks.

The fact that the handling has a bit of forgiveness in it soon lets you know if things are about to go pear shaped, and gives you time to rectify it... hopefully.

With an all-up weight of 8.92kg, the Izalco Race isn't too shabby when it comes to climbing either, especially when you take into account the 50/34t crankset and 11-34t cassette. It offers a massive range of gears that somehow never really feels that gappy considering it's spread across just nine sprockets. More on that below...

Frame and fork

The Izalco Race follows a common theme, oversizing, especially at the front end.

It has a tapered head tube which has this cool angular design going on, making it look the same diameter top and bottom. This allows for the top tube to be quite wide at the front before it tapers back towards the seat post.

The down tube is round and big in diameter, thanks to the cross sectional area of the bottom of the head tube and the BB86 bottom bracket area. This is why the Focus feels so stiff under load.

BB86 means the Focus uses press-fit bearings for the bottom bracket, similar to PF30 but designed for a 24mm axle diameter like all Shimano cranksets come in.

The key is that the bottom bracket shell is 86mm wide, the same as a standard one including the width of external bearing cups. The upside here is that the Q-factor (the distance between pedal faces) isn't affected but the wider BB offers more stiffness, one of the reasons why the Focus feels so alive when you give the pedals a good kicking.

Move back from the bottom bracket and the Izalco goes all slender in a bid for comfort, especially those narrow seatstays no doubt allowing a little in the way of flex.

All the cable routing is internal, which gives the whole bike a clean look, and I certainly never had any issues with any rattling. You also get a cool Lone Ranger mask on the head tube to avoid any cable rub. If you wanted to go crazy and update this bike to Di2 then the frame is fully ready.

Groupset

There are nine models in the Izalco Race range, seven carbon and two aluminium alloy. The one we've got here is the cheapest carbon model at £1,099 and it comes with a pretty decent spec.

In use, Shimano Sora is barely any different to Tiagra or 105, it just comes down to how many gears you want: Sora is 9-speed, Tiagra 10 and 105 11. The shifters look and feel identical, as do most of the other components.

It's great to see here that Focus has specced a full groupset including the chainset and brakes, both of which can often get swapped out for a generic replacement under the accounting department's instruction.

Because of that spread of gears on the cassette you get a long cage rear mech, giving you pretty much full rein to change the ratios as you see fit for the terrain you're intending to ride on or, if this is your first bike, as you get stronger.

The brakes are pretty good – way better than they used to be – although the non-cartridge pads don't offer the same stopping capability of, say, the 105s so an upgrade would be on the cards if it was my bike. They don't cause the 'am I going to stop?' kind of scream I used to release on previous Sora and Tiagra brakes, though.

Wheels and tyres

For the wheels you get a set of Alex ALX-210s. At this price point and considering the quality of the frame, I certainly wouldn't dismiss them as needing upgrading too early. Yes, a lighter wheelset totally transforms this bike, but the 210s are strong and don't really feel like they are holding the frame back.

They remained true throughout the test period and the bearings didn't offer up any resistance, even after being taken on the wet and salt-strewn roads of the Christmas period.

Tyres are often a scrimped on part of the build to hit a price point, so it's great to see that Focus has managed to spec a set of Continental's Ultra Sport IIs. These are good at hitting that balance of durability versus grip and rolling resistance for use year-round.

Dry weather grip is decent enough that you can really push the bike through the bends, and wet weather grip is much better than it was on the originals.

Finishing kit

Component-wise Focus has specced a BBB Basic bar, stem and seatpost. It's all, well, basic stuff but it gets the job done and provides a decent enough set of contact points.

The handlebar has just a 125mm drop from the hoods, which means the drops are accessible to those riders who aren't overly flexible, and the 70mm reach means you won't find yourself overstretching either.

Prologo provides the Kappa saddle and again it's good to see a branded product here. It's firm but a nice shape, and I certainly never had any issues with it.

Value

Some might look down their nose at a Shimano Sora-equipped bike for over a grand – after all, you can get Ribble's R872 with Tiagra for the same price and similar finishing kit, or even our 2017 Road Bike of the Year, the Tiagra-equipped Boardman Road Team Carbon, that is now £900.

> road.cc Road Bike of the Year 2017/2018

Trust me, though, I can't emphasise enough how good the frame and fork of the Izalco Race are. If this is the most expensive model you can afford, go for it, you won't be disappointed. (Another £300 will get you the 105-equipped model.)

Upgrade the bits that are important to your over time and the bike will literally get lighter, quicker and more responsive.

Verdict

An awesome carbon fibre frameset that gives a grin-inducing ride, backed up with solid components