The new Colnago V4Rs aims to be a Tour winner
Words CHARLOTTE HEAD Photography TAPESTRY
When Tadej Pogačar won back-to-back Tours de France in 2020 and 2021, it was aboard a Colnago V3Rs. It would therefore be easy for Colnago to claim that it already has a world-beating bike and that any changes in the next-generation V4Rs would only be minor tweaks, but that’s not how Colnago works.
‘We’re creating bikes for one of the best teams in the world with one of the strongest riders,’ says Colnago digital manager Gabriele Sirtori. ‘It’s not enough to have a great product. We have to keep evolving to try to create the best.’
Such was the desire to provide for Pogačar that it would be fair to say the V4Rs was made first and foremost with the Slovenian in mind, with his input proving essential to the development process.
‘Tadej isn’t a picky rider,’ says Sirtori. ‘He just wants a good overall package. He doesn’t care whether it’s the lightest or the most aero. He just wants the best balance of all the key elements.’
One of the elements that underwent the most changes in the creation of the V4Rs was its stiffness. Feeling that standard ways of measuring stiffness weren’t translating when it came to real-world experience, Colnago set about creating its own tests. Rather than using the traditional method of measuring flex in a jig at three set points on the frame, the manufacturer deployed slow-motion cameras to see where, how and at what angles riders’ power was being applied to the frame and tried to replicate the findings in the lab.
‘In the end we came up with five different layups but still didn’t have any conclusive results,’ says Colnago's head of research and development Davide Fumagalli. ‘We gave the team the different versions of the bike, the prototipos, and selected one based on their feedback.’
As it turned out, the frameset that the riders found to be the stiffest did not measure as such when tested by the standard method.
Keep it simple
While changing the carbon layup, Colnago also wanted to address the issue of frame robustness.
‘Around 45% of the breakages we were seeing on the UAE team’s V3Rs bikes occurred at the seatstays,’ says Fumagalli. ‘We’ve managed to cut that to around 10-12% in 2023 by altering their shape and using a less brittle carbon fibre type.’
Certainly, churning through multiple bikes as a result of breakages wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t just the frames that were posing challenges. Thanks to the full integration of modern race bikes, team mechanics often have to reroute whole hydraulic s
