Five great race bikes

There’s a huge variety of race bikes to choose from, and a vast price range. To give you a flavour of road bike reviews usa what’s out there, here are five great bikes, covering the price range from very reasonable to “you could get a car for that!”

Specialized Allez E5 Sport 2021 — £999.00(link is external)
For the latest edition of their entry-level race bike, Specialized softened the Allez a touch, raising the front end, slackening the angles and adding mudguard mounts, but managed to do this without losing the Allez’s fun and appealing ride.

This is a bike that’ll help you out if you’ve had a challenging day and need to blow off some steam; you can stamp on the pedals and really go for it.

It’s an exciting bike to ride and you’ll easily get that little adrenaline giggle when you really push it. If you’re confident, you can definitely take a few risks.

Van Rysel Ultra CF Ultegra — £2,299.99(link is external)
The Van Rysel RR 920 CF is built around Decathlon’s Ultra Evo Dynamic frameset, which in a medium size has a claimed weight for the frame of 850g and just 320g for the fork. Hung with an Ultegra groupset and Mavic Cosmic Pro Carbon wheels that makes the RR 920 CF a bargain super-light bike.

When he reviewed the B’Twin Ultra 900 CF 105, which used the same frame, our Stu Kerton said: “The handling is sweet. The head angle is 73 degrees, which isn’t massively steep for this kind of bike, but it’s enough to keep the front end quick and precise without instilling any form of twitchiness. The Ultra CF is a fun, quick-handling machine to ride, no matter what your level of ability; it flatters.”

2021 specialized tarmac sl6 comp
We loved this bike’s 105-equipped kid brother, and like that bike this is a smart-looking and well-packaged bike that offers the sort of fast and engaging ride that will suit budding racers.

The position and ride is what you would expect from a race bike; it strikes a good balance and is very accommodating of new cyclists as it is to experienced racers.

Like previous generation Tarmacs it’s easy to live with. There are no handling quirks, it’s very predictable and you feel right at home very easily. This is a bike that can equally be ridden all-day long in comfort, booted around a tight and twisty criterium circuit, ridden to work, used on the chaingang, or just lazy Sunday morning rides to the coffee shop. It’s happy pootling or going flat out.

Cannondale SystemSix Ultegra Candy Red
Cannondale were late to the aero-road-bike party, but when they did arrive they made one heck of an entrance with the SystemSix, a bike they billed as the “world’s fastest road bike”. It’s “not only the fastest in the wind-tunnel or just the fastest for a select few riders in a select few scenarios, but the fastest for anyone interested in going faster” according to Cannondale. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about here: bikes that deliver the sheer thrill of going flat-out.

The SystemSix’s frame, fork, seatpost, bar, stem and wheels are all engineered to work together as one system, directing air over the bike so as to minimise drag. If you can sustain 30mph, it’ll take 50watts less effort on the SystemSix than on a regular race bike, Cannondale claims.

Tech editor Mat Brett was impressed. “Chuck it into a corner and you end up exactly where you want to be rather than just in the general vicinity,” he wrote. “The ride position helped there too. Down on the drops I felt poised, balanced and ready to attack the bends. It’s a bike that reacts quickly, handles beautifully and doesn’t make you feel like you’ve just taken a kicking.”