Team CSC riders used to always face a conundrum when picking their bike for a race. Would they go with the incredibly lightweight R2.5 or with the very aero Soloist? Some like Jens Voigt swear by the Soloist, which perfectly suits his riding style of long breakaways. Others like Carlos Sastre, the first ever professional cyclist to ride a prototype R2.5, have a preference for the R2.5.
This is obviously a good problem to have, as their competitors usually only have one option and while some may be able to ride something approaching an R2.5, none have a frame as aerodynamic as the Soloist at their disposal. But it will come as no surprise that the team would like to have their cake and eat it too, and thus has been asking us if we could build a frame with the weight of an R2.5 and the aerodynamics of the Soloist. What may come as a surprise is that as early as 2001, long before Cervélo’s affiliation with Team CSC, we had initiated a project called FM28 with the goal to do just that.
Cervélo's customer service point man Chris Bastie builds up Jens Voigt's prototype
The first years of the project were earmarked for aerodynamic testing. With the aero features settled on, focus switched to the structural design of the frame. Developments in carbon fiber frame design go very rapidly at Cervélo, so the design goals were adjusted several times along the way. The goal was always to make a frame with the weight of the R2.5 and the aerodynamics of the Soloist, but between 2003 and today the R2.5 was lightened by 200g and so the Soloist Carbon had to follow suit. In 2005 the final details of the design were nailed down, and the first prototypes were tested in May. They passed all our internal tests at the first attempt, which is no surprise since we by now have enough design experience to know what we have to do to pass our stiffness, strength and durability tests.
Jens Voigt tests the prototype during the 2005 Tour de Suisse
The next stage of the process unveils one of the big changes for Cervélo over the past few years. Where the original 2001 plan would have called for local road testing, nowadays we have the world-class riders of Team CSC to perform the road testing. So one of our owners, Gerard Vroomen, flew off to the Giro with the first prototypes, and returned a few days later with feedback from several riders and Bjarne Riis himself. Six iterations later, our customer service point man Chris Bastie flew to the Dauphiné-Libéré and the Tour de Suisse with what we thought was the ultimate version, V7. Arvesen, Julich and Voigt confirmed everything was good to go, but in parallel to the team testing we had made and tested five more lay-ups. In the end, lay-up seven was picked for pilot production (nine frames of which went to the Team for the Tour) and full production went ahead without any further changes.
The ultimate reward for Jens Voigt; yellow in the Tour
Jens Voigt put his Soloist Carbon to good use in his stage 9 breakaway at the Tour, perfectly showcasing his and his bike's strengths. The yellow jersey was the deserved reward. Since then, even the riders who preferred not to switch from the R2.5 to the Soloist so close to the Tour have made the switch with devastating effect. Ivan Basso made the switch on the first day of the Tour of Denmark, and he won. He rode the Soloist Carbon again on day two, and won again. He also won on it the third day of that same race. He didn't win on his Soloist Carbon the fourth day, but that was only because that day was a time trial (which he won on his P3 Carbon).
The magazines have been equally impressed with the Soloist Carbon showing up on covers in France, Spain and the US. CycleSport did a very extensive article on the making of the Soloist Carbon, which makes for very interesting reading. It can be found elsewhere on this website on the reviews page
