Specialized S-Works Tarmac
Bike manufacturers typically like to make a song and dance about their latest and greatest machine but the Specialized Tarmac received a decidedly understated launch.
The latest iteration of the American firm’s flagship race bike was initially spotted at Liège-Bastogne-Liège before it was officially announced in the build-up to Giro d’Italia, where it’s being ridden by a number of riders from Specialized’s two sponsored teams: Astana and Omega Pharma-QuickStep. You can see Astana leader Michele Scarponi’s bike here.
The new Tarmac – which loses the SL suffix of previous models – is, to the naked eye at least, a subtle update to the outgoing SL4, with the redesigned seatclamp, integrated into the toptube to leave more of the seatpost exposed in order to increase deflection and improve comfort, the most obvious upgrade on a machine which still has the arcing toptube and huge downtube of the machine is succeeds. But look beneath the skin – or, rather, the carbon fibre lay-up – and the Tarmac has been overhauled in a frame that Specialized call ‘Rider-First Engineered’.
What’s that? Each of the Tarmac’s seven sizes, from 49cm to 61cm, has been designed independently, with the carbon layup configured according to “the the real world stresses introduced by the corresponding rider.” Specialized say the concept has been inherited from their collaboration with British Formula 1 team, McLaren, and that it has allowed them to tune the stiffness and handling characteristics individually for each frame size, rather than designing a 54cm or 56cm frame, for example, and tweaking it through the rest of the size range. As an example, Specialized say the SL4 in its smaller sizes was too responsive to steering input for optimal handling, while larger frames were not responsive enough, but the ‘Rider-First Engineered’ Tarmac is said to achieve the right balance across every size.
But can Astana’s Vincenzo Nibali, who has skipped the defence of his Giro d’Italia title to prepare for the Tour de France, mount a challenge for the title on Specialized’s new flagship machine?
