Most bike manufactures make some claim or other that their top end race bike is the fastest of the lot, usually without disclosing the test protocol. In order to cut through the marketing noise we took 11 superbikes to the wind tunnel ourselves to see which one actually was the fastest.
This complements our other wind tunnel tests, where we’ve independently found which are the fastest helmets and the fastest wheels, as well as our lab test to find the fastest tyres.
In our bikes test we found that the Factor Ostro VAM was the fastest overall across a full sweep of yaw angles (the angle at which you strike the wind), but in a dead straight line, the Cervélo S5 is the clear winner, and it has a quite staggering £3,300 off the asking price right now of the exact one we tested. If you want “free” speed, it’s about as good a deal as you’re ever likely to find right now.
By the numbers, we found the S5 would save you more than 23 watts at 40km/h over a more basic road bike, or a time saving of 1m 41s over a 40km time trial at 250 watts.
I should caveat this by saying it’s only the fastest of the eleven bikes we tested. We took as many of the whole WorldTour paddock of bikes that we could get our hands on to the tunnel, so it’s a pretty good representation of the absolute pinnacle of our sport, but we can’t say for certain how it would compare to the Colnago V4Rs or the Bianchi Oltre, for example.
This isn’t even the top-of-the-line model either, specced as it is with SRAM Force rather than SRAM Red. The Red equipped model would be lighter, but also significantly more expensive, though not necessarily more aero in the grand scheme of things.
