hrdknox1

Perhaps rim brakes are making a resurgence. Team Ineos, now Team Ineos Grenadier, will ride Pinarello F12 Dogma‘s with rim brakes in this year’s Tour de France. The Team edition bike will be available for purchase to the public in rim or disc.

ZHVelo

Resurgence?

They have been on rim brakes always. More and more pro teams are moving to disc.

hrdknox1

They are the top team and have not switched over to disc. Obviously they are doing what they feel is best to win, including taking into account that the Mavic universal support vehicles only carry rim brake wheels. Team Jumbo Visma are also using rim brakes. Perhaps more pro teams will do the like.

fietsbob

Saw rather slow on the road wheel changes with through axle disc brake bikes last year..







...

surak

They run rim brakes because their bikes are heavy. Same reason JV is going to ride black bikes this year. https://cyclingtips.com/2020/08/what...out-the-grams/

79pmooney

I bet the faster wheel change and neutral support wheels is a bigger deciding factor despite that article. If you have GC riders ahead of team support, a flat means a getting a neutral wheel that is not changed by the team mechanic. Seconds lost can be many thousands of dollars costly, especially if that GC rider has no teammates on had to pull him back to the lead group. And if that wheel doesn't have a disc that works, that could be a real problem in the mountains! Both Ineos and Jumbo-Visma are GC teams. Discs are simply too high a risk in the GC picture (as long as your riders aren't raised on discs and expect that stopping power going into mountain turns).

surak

Sure there's some small percentage of risk to needing a wheel change during a race. But there's a 100% probability of running extra weight on a bike during the entire race if your team uses an older aero bike that's not competitively light. It's not so cut and dry that using rim brakes is the best choice if the bikes weren't as heavy. JV is switching to Cervelo next year. If I had to bet, I'd side with James Huang's expectation that they'll switch to discs then.

ZHVelo

But it's not a resurgence if they have always been on them..."oh, two top teams haven't swapped (yet), it's a resurgence" makes no sense.

hrdknox1

Read the original post. An understanding of the word, "Perhaps", is important here.

MinnMan

Yeah, I've wondered about that. This is more a mechanical question than a racing one, but why not build disc wheels with QR? I have a bike with such a set up (admittedly not very high end). What obvious thing am I missing?

MinnMan

I thought that the UCI limit of 6.8 kg was pretty easy to meet on any major bike platform these days. Shows what I (don't) know.

MinnMan

A related question. Rim brakes with carbon rims and a carbon brake track? What the hell do they do on mountain descents when it rains? Or for that matter, in the peloton? Very dicy, I'd think.

(I just read that the Shimano C24s actually have aluminum brake tracks, but that Ineos uses lightweight (<1000 g!) Meilenstein Obermayers for the mountain stages and those have carbon tracks. I guess if it rains, they swap back to the Shimanos.....)

csuperbike

Rim brakes have worked for 100 years. They still work now.

ZHVelo

And you need to go and learn the definition of 'resurgence'.

Shadco 

What makes them the top team?

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RocThrower

I'm all in disc for myself, but it looks like Alaphilipe's front wheel locked up or something after he went down during stage 1. The mechanic couldn't even remove the front axle with a drill.


Start at 7:40

hrdknox1

I would say the fact that they have won seven of the last eight Tour de France's, and have the money to bring in the best riders.

Shadco 

So the TDF is all that matters in pro cycling then?

Kind of a narrow measure isn’t that?

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surak

That seems more like a freak occurrence, or a result of a crash rather than the reason. Plenty of crashes lead to bikes being mangled to the point of needing a full swap.

If we're going to point out how brakes led to crashes in stage 1, how about JV's George Bennett losing contol on a straight section of a descent trying fruitlessly to scrub speed off before a bend with his rim brakes. On the FloBikes post-race show, Alex Stieda was convinced it was because his brakes wouldn't bite on carbon rims. Tony Martin also went down. Not surprising that they'd want to negotiate a truce on the final descent in order to reach the finish line in one piece.

​​​​​Of course the conditions were horrible for everyone, and many riders crashed. But did anyone besides Ineos' Sivakov crash TWICE?

MinnMan

On carbon rims, and especially in the rain, not so much.

aclinjury

Sivakov just suck at descending. Homeboy also crashed descending in the Dauphane, all dry condition.

tomato coupe

Twice as many teams are on disc brakes this year, as there were last year. So, sure ... rim brakes are making a resurgence.

ZHVelo

This is really ignorant.

What does 'work' mean? How well? How well compared to alternatives? Have they worked on carbon rims for 100 years? Were they working in the same environment (i.e. did they do the same courses, the same speeds) as now?

$1000 bikes work and yet pros don't use them.

Doge

I don't know where the ignorant comment comes from. Pros use what they are given.
The braking is fine with either and no TDF pro needs the 28mm+ tires you can use with a disc. They are still winning on 23-25mm tires.
The need to swap parts among GC teams is obvious.
The car is not always there and having 7 teammates that can give you their wheels (quickly) vs 1-2 that are setup your size to give you a bike should also be obvious.

Then there is less rotating weight, less fork weight and less cable/fluid weight. So even at equal mass the climbers would sometimes prefer to add lead to the frame than mass on the wheel, fork and cockpit (brake fluid reservoirs).

I have some 7-10 disc braked wheels and some 15-20 rim braked ones. Some of the disc brakes are not as good as some of the carbon rim brakes and visa versa.

Doge

Bad setup then.