Following up their hardtail mountain bike debut final fall, Cervélo is again with an all-new full-suspension ZFS-5 short-travel XC bike simply in time for this weekend’s cross-country World Cup racing kick-off. Up to now, we’ve simply acquired a sneak peek of the bike that may see its racing debut underneath two Dutch riders of Jumbo-Visma, Fem van Empel and Milan Vader in Nové Město na Moravě – and we’ll take a deeper dive this coming weekend.
What do we all know thus far?
Cervélo ZFS-5 carbon full-suspension XC mountain bike
Cervélo’s all-new Z-series mountain bikes acquired a bit little bit of a jilted begin in 2022, as their ZHT-5 hardtail had been initially set to debut final spring on the World Cup underneath Milan Vader. However the Jumbo-Visma racer had a life-altering crash – fracturing vertebrae, collarbone, shoulder & extra throughout the Tour of the Basque Nation street race simply days earlier than the primary XCO race of 2022. He actually spent half a 12 months in rehab, however was surprisingly capable of return to racing on & off-road final 12 months – debuting the Cervélo hardtail in October.
Now he’s again on the World Cup, joined by new teammate and present Cyclocross World Champion Fem van Empel, each set to race the brand new totally on the notoriously techy Nové Město XCO course this weekend.
So, onto the bike…
Tech Particulars & Geometry
Sure, Cervélo goes all-in with XC mountain bike racing aboard the all-new ZFS-5 full-suspension bike. Official particulars stay skinny on this XC race bike in the intervening time, however we’ve acquired lots to go on…
Described as a “Progressive However Racy” bike, the ZFS is a basic full-carbon single-pivot mountain bike with flexing seatstays and a horizontal linkage-driven shock underneath the highest tube. Cervélo says they selected to “preserve it single, silly” with a easy suspension design that’s “tried and true, and really tuneable”.
That ‘progressive’ geometry of the bike is a little more slack-for-XC than the ZHT hardtail to deal with tough trendy technical cross-country racing, with a 67.8° head angle in its shorter 100mm journey setup, paired with a pleasant and steep 76.2° seat angle to get again uphill. And for riders trying to go slacker, they will shift to a 66.6° headtube within the 120mm variant.
One trickier bit within the suspension, Cervélo describes the publish mount rear brake as ‘floating’ because it attaches to the chainstay after which the axle, to isolate it from the suspension flex across the drop-out and lower-end of the seatstay.
The carbon full-suspension bike sticks with a threaded backside bracket for usability, a 30.9 seatpost with stealth dropper routing, full inside cable routing via the 1.5″ headset, UDH compatibility with the newest direct mount SRAM Eagle AXS Transmission derailleurs, and will get two units of bottle cage mounts inside the primary triangle.
Yet another attention-grabbing element although is that Cervélo have shared two units of geometry for 2 totally different journey choices – 100mm or 120mm, presumably for cross-country or marathon racing. Whereas it’s not unusual to slap an extended fork on an XC race bike to slacken it out for extra comfy long-distance mountain bike racing, the 120mm geo is slacker BUT shares the identical backside bracket drop. That means that there’s both a flip-chip someplace that we haven’t been capable of spot, or there is likely to be 2 totally different linkages for the separate journey choices, which may additionally permit for rear journey variation too.
For positive, I’ll discover out this weekend!
Cervélo ZFS-5 – Choices & availability
For now, pricing hasn’t been set for the brand new full-suspension Cervélo ZFS-5 XC bike. However we do count on it to be supplied in a number of construct equipment choices, and each 100mm cross-country or 120mm marathon journey. What we do know for positive, is that you’ll have to wait a couple of extra months for pricing and construct particulars when the brand new ZFS-5 XC bike turns into out there this summer time 2023 via your native Cervélo vendor.
