Fourth in line beneath Campagnolo’s Super Record, Record and Chorus mechanical groupsets, the Campagnolo Potenza (Italian for power) benefits from trickle-down technology. It’s made from aluminium, with the lever bodies and parts of the rear derailleur made from what Campagnolo calls Technopolymer, a plastic that's reinforced with carbon fibre.
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For riders who have used Campagnolo before, Potenza’s Ergopower levers have familiar ergonomics but with a more rounded ‘horn’ and new Varicushion rubber hoods to improve vibration absorption and grip.
There are alloy brake levers and composite shift levers, the inner thumb lever following the down-swept EPS style, which improves control over Ergopower’s original right-angled design. The right-side lever’s Power Shift mechanism allows three upshifts (inboard) at once, but only one downshift. The left shifter maintains its trim function, with an extra click between ring shifts for fine tuning your chain line.
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The aluminium front derailleur has a steel cage that’s shaped to improve downshifts and work with larger ratio cassettes and shift lever effort has been reduced. The rear derailleur promises identical performance to its loftier siblings and reduces the spacing between the cassette sprockets and upper jockey wheel, engaging more teeth with the chain for better power transfer and reduced wear.
Five cassettes accompany the groupset. We tested the 11-32. Then there’s the four-arm crank, which replicates Super Record performance, but in hollow-forged aluminium. Its eight-bolt fitting system is compatible with common road ring combinations and the one-piece hollow steel axle has a Power Torque+ system incorporating an internal extractor driven by a 14mm hex key.
The skeleton brake calipers look to be carried over from neighbouring groupsets, which is a good thing as they work well. The groupset’s available in anodised black or polished aluminium, and our black version with 50/34 rings, outboard bottom bracket cups, medium cage rear derailleur and 11-32 cassette weighed in at 2,442g. For comparison, Shimano Ultegra 6800 weighs in at 2,294g with a shorter cage derailleur and 11-25 cassette.
How does Potenza compare to Ultegra?
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