Specialized is due a big redesign of its flagship gravel race bike: Here’s what a new Crux will need to be at the cutting edge

I have a heavily customised Specialized Crux that’s a few years old now, and I love it… but this is meant to be the American bike behemoth’s flagship gravel race bike and honestly, even I’d admit that it is now an outdated design. Maybe not for long though. I think there’s a new one coming.

To keep up with the Jones’, this thing needs aero tube profiles like the Specialized SL8. It needs the integrated front end like that bike, and I want it to retain its low weight. To be fair, Specialized have done that with the Aethos, so they know how. For the American market though – which is so incredibly important in the gravel scene – I think it needs to be able to fit proper MTB tyres.

There are smaller things too, so here’s what I think they need to do, and why. Plus, I’ll let you know why, if they make all of these changes, I’ll be rather sad. First, let’s look at the evidence for why I think there’s a new Crux coming soon….

Why might a new Specialized gravel race bike be imminent?

The Crux changed from a cyclocross to a gravel bike with a massive redesign in 2021 and, despite some rolling changes to add a UDH dropout last year, this is effectively the same bike, so it is about due a redesign.

 

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Then, if you’ve been following gravel tech, you might have seen some new products popping up at Santa Vall. The new products include what look like new Roval Terra CLX wheels and a new integrated gravel cockpit from Roval too. These are both tell-tale signs from previous Specialized launches of an impending new bike.

As to when we’ll see a new Crux, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that Specialized will use the biggest North American gravel races to launch a new gravel race bike, so I’d expect to see things in May at Unbound Gravel.

Aero evolution

Gravel races, especially the North American ones, are raced at super fast speeds, and one look at the average speeds shows how much aero matters. This is the main area where I think the Crux is lacking.

No tube on the Crux is optimised to help you go fast, so at race speeds, this bike is going to be haemorrhaging time to aero competitors such as Factor and Cervelo.

But how a new aero gravel frameset will look is unclear. I think it’ll go one of two ways: Specialized could quite easily copy and paste the tube shapes from the Tarmac SL8, or it’ll develop a bunch of new tube shapes that are optimised to work well with the wider tyres that gravel racers use.

I am leaning towards the latter, mostly because I think this would be more interesting, and it might give us a few hints about the frame shapes on future Specialized road bikes.

But what I’d almost guarantee is that Specialized will be focusing most of its attention on the front end of the bike. That’s what they did with the Tarmac SL8, saying features like the speed sniffer headtube were the most important for drag reduction.

Comfort is, however, still rather important in gravel as you’re going to be flying across some pretty rough ground. As a result, I’d expect to see some pretty thin seat stays used, and these will almost certainly be dropped a little.

I’ll finish this section by saying that I think the aero focus will make the Crux even more exclusive to keen racers than it already is. For general riders, I’d imagine the Crux is about to get a bit too much, and really, Specialized has the Diverge for the more adventurous end of gravel.

Integrated front end

A huge part of the aero changes I’m expecting to see will come at the front end, just like you see with the Tarmac SL8. But I think this is a key aesthetic change that Specialized needs to make. These days, exposed cables around the headtube look a bit out of place and while I love it, I’d guess it’s putting some riders off buying the Crux.

To do this, Specialized and their mates at Roval probably need to design a new bar, though we’re pretty sure this already exists. Spy shots have been popping up on social media and at early season races like Santa Vall. The stem section looks a little flatter, while the drops are visibly flared, but details remain scarce.

Helpfully, Specialized has just done all of the hard work moving external cables into the headtube with the recent Aethos changes. I’d bet they won’t have too much trouble doing this and honestly, I can’t see them not doing it.

Keep the weight low

Another thing that Specialized has to do is to keep the weight low. It’s one of the best features of the current Crux and, I’d love to see something close to the 6.9kg current weight.

That said, if the Crux is about to get aero, this will be really hard to achieve. Currently, the Crux borrows a huge amount of frame design from the uber lightweight Aethos, and if Specialized wants to make the tubes aero while also giving more space for those 2.2 tyres, there will be a simple case of additional frame material.

Still, Specialized has managed to keep the weight of the Tarmac SL8 down, so I’d be this will still be at the lighter end of things.

MTB tyres are coming

Large volume tyres can be significantly faster on gravel (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)

Love them or hate them, lightweight XC MTB tyres are very popular in the biggest gravel races. Just like with pro road racing, amateurs want to use what the pro gravel racers choose.

I’d therefore say it’s important for Specialized to increase tyre clearance from the official 47mm (though most pros push 50mm tyres in there) to 56mm, so that riders can throw on a set of 2.2” XC tyres if they want.

These wider tyres look set to be on new Roval Terra gravel wheels. The new rims look significantly deeper and feature a very blunt profile at the spoke holes. While we’re on the subject of spokes, these seem to have come straight from the Roval Rapide Sprint wheels.

But the main thing I want to know is how wide these wheels are. Surely, if Specialized knows its pros will be running super wide tyres, it will have designed these wheels to be optimised with them.

Smaller changes

Onto a couple of smaller changes now, and I’ll start with one that I’m undecided on. It’s frame storage, which seems to really divide opinion. If it is done well, then I quite like it. My take is that for general riding, I can load up the compartments with the stuff I’d usually have in a saddle bag. To me, that is simply cleaner.

However, some riders find them annoying to use and honestly, I can’t see Specialized putting them on a racing frameset. The American brand loves a feathery frameset weight, and storage compartments mean reinforcement. That all adds to the weight.

I’ll also put geometry changes into this smaller changes category as I don’t see too much changing. Really, the Crux had already become a gravel race bike, even if Specialized still called it a cyclocross bike. So I think they’ll stick with the current long and relatively low geometry, though if they’re going to add the space for MTB tyres, we’re probably looking at a slightly longer wheelbase and maybe a drop in the bottom bracket height.

They’re generally good things for a gravel bike though, so that’s fine by me.

This bike makes me sad

Whatever the final details are on a new Crux, I have to say that I’m a little sad. If the bike does move to the aero gravel sector, it means that we’ll lose a good cyclocross bike and that’s a sign of cyclocross’ continued decline in importance.

I love racing and watching cyclocross, but it seems most brands just don’t really care that much about it anymore. Gravel has really come in to replace it, and for most of us, I suppose that is actually a good thing.

Current gravel race bikes, like my Crux, are excellent cyclocross bikes for amateurs like me. Let’s be honest, most of us only have one bike and I’ll do, at best, 10 or so races in a winter. Having a bike that can get to the end of a muddy race without getting clogged up is quite the advantage, and the space in the Crux’s frame allows that.

Plus, when the cyclocross season is done and I’ve only raced once because I had a cold for the entire winter, I’m not too sad because my CX bike then just becomes my gravel bike.

So, if this is the end of the round-tubed Crux, then I’ll be a bit sad… but I’m also super excited to see what Specialized does with it. I’ll be trying to get my hands on it for a full review, but for now, why not check out the lovely gravel bikes from the men’s and women’s 2025 Gravel World Championships?