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The Sirrus has been in Specialized’s lineup for a good long time now. For many years it sat below the Specialized Allez as a kind of halfway house for those customers that wanted one of the best road bikes but didn’t want to have drop bars. A high-performance hybrid, to use another phrase. Now, though, it seems like the new Sirrus Carbon is being launched as both a gateway to road bikes and a gateway to gravel bikes too.
Bigger tyres, a carbon frame, and future shock are all talking points, but the main one is going to be the frame shape itself, with what is dubbed the ‘Compliance Junction’. We got a sneak preview of it from a new patent spotted in February, but now we at least know what it was destined for.
The Compliance Junction
Barring semi-regular deviations off the beaten track the bicycle frame has remained the standard double diamond for the majority of its history. This is partially down to the heavy hand of the UCI, which mandates as such for races. Not all consumers are racers though; in fact, the majority don’t race at all, and so don’t need a bike frame that’s UCI-legal. For the new Sirrus models, Specialized has gone all carbon, with a bold new shape that sees the chainstays effectively form a bridge to the downtube in an arc, the apex of which connects to the truncated seat tube.
The aim of this new design is to provide added compliance at the rear of the bike, the arc effectively operating like a leaf spring. This is complemented by larger tyres, up to 42mm but coming as stock with 38s, and the same Future Shock up front as the Specialized Diverge and Specialized Roubaix.
Is the new Specialized Sirrus a gravel bike then? If it had drop bars we’d certainly be calling it one. It has all the hallmarks, and one version at least comes with Pathfinders, the Pro version of which sits within our list of the best gravel tyres, but it has the heritage of a hybrid, so who is it aimed at?
Sirrus Carbon, and Sirrus Carbon X
The new Sirrus Carbon has been another canvas upon which the paint of ‘make it gravel’ has been applied liberally, but if you’re after what we might all think of as a classic hybrid then worry not. In order to capture both markets, Specialized has bisected the…
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