It’s long been a gripe of many within the bike industry that the mass of UCI regulations that proscribe almost every element of a road bike’s design are outdated and have hindered innovation and creativity.
The news that a trial of road bike disc brakes by the sport’s top teams would continue into 2016 has caused much speculation but it’s also signalled that big changes are afoot with the way the sport’s governing body wants to regulate and interact with manufacturers, riders and teams. We caught up with the UCI’s Technical Manager Mark Barfield at the Cyclitech Conference in Brussels for a brief chat about rotors, riders and regulations.
Mark Barfield: Yes, there was a meeting back in November and an ‘agreed common specification’ – the wording behind that is very important. This is not an imposed standard and the reason for this is that this is a trial year, so at the end of the trial year they may well go “Do you know what, we need different axles, different rotor sizes…” but it’s been agreed between all of the manufacturers and more importantly with all of the neutral service providers as well. So, it’s a standard rotor size, it’s a thru axle – it’s a common agreed specification.
ADVERTISEMENT
[Word is this agreed specification is for 160mm rotors, with Shimano-type 12mm E-thru axles front and rear. BikeRadar are waiting on confirmation of exactly what these specs will be and will update this article then]
First of all it is a trial, so I think that’s part of the process, this is not a rule change, we’re seeking feedback throughout the year. We ran trials for teams during August and September and during that we gave out rider and mechanic questionnaires. Actually, there was a lot of wandering around team buses before and after events asking how it had gone so we were gaining feedback that way and will do next year through really encouraging riders, mechanics, teams, commissaires and race organisers to talk to us about this.
You can read more at BikeRadar.com
via BikeRadar All the latest from BikeRadar.com http://ift.tt/1lwwv8p
No comments:
Post a Comment