The latest offering from Milan based manufacturer Bianchi hasn’t been the best kept secret in the world. Being the eagle eyed bunch of well connected journalists that we are, we spotted it at the Vuelta a España and managed to get some even more detail shots that feature in our Vuelta tech gallery. While we’ve been able to speculate about it, we didn’t know if it was a replacement for the current lightweight option, the Specialissima, or a new model to the range entirely.
Now we can actually say with confidence that this is the new Specialissima, and as we suspected it’s following the trend of the new Tarmac SL8, the new SuperSix Evo, the Canyon Ultimate, the Ridley Falcn and many more besides in its aim to be an all-round race bike rather than simply a climbing machine.
The headline figures are, as is customary, a reduction in weight and an increase in aerodynamic efficiency against the outgoing model, closing the gap between the all-round options and the all-out-aero Oltre RC. There are a number of claims to dive into both for aero and for weight, so we will deal with each of them separately.
UCI illegal weight for top spec RC model
The figure that jumps out from the press kit is a UCI non-compliant 6.6kg total weight for a complete bike in a size 55cm. The waters are slightly muddied by the fact that the figures are “accurate to +/- 5%,” meaning the weight could be anywhere from a truly bonkers 6.27kg to a very much legal 6.93kg.
As we’ve seen especially with the new Tarmac, this low weight has been achieved by concentrating the weight savings at the rear of the bike, where aero gains are smallest. In practice it means pencil-thin seatstays and similarly slimmed down chainstays. Even mostly unseen areas of the bike have been on a diet, with machined out sections featuring on the derailleur hanger and the internal seatpost wedge. In a mirroring of Milanese neighbours Colnago and its V4RS, a minimal paint scheme, mostly comprising raw carbon, saves 40g for the top-tier Reparto Corse model.
In a similar fashion to the new Factor O2 VAM, the new Specialisma comes with in-house Reparto Corse 33mm wheels, which tip the scales at 1380g the pair, also with a 5% margin of error. They are tubeless, with a 21/28mm internal/external width, and are capable of running up to 32mm tyres. There’s no clarity as to whether this is the…
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