Wout van Aert hasn’t quite hit his stride at this year’s Tour de France, with the 29-year-old still chasing form following his horror crash in Dwars door Vlaanderen in March, which saw him laid up with a fractured collarbone, broken ribs and a broken sternum. All things considered, his second place finish on stage 13’s sprint into Pau might well be considered a remarkable success.
Meanwhile, the most recent high mountain stages in the Pyrenees saw the Belgian superstar performing domestique duties in service of his team leader and GC hopeful Jonas Vingegaard.
Unlike Vingegaard, who prefers to swap to his Cervélo R5 frame for the high mountains, Van Aert rarely trades in his Cervélo S5, preferring the bike’s aero credentials over almost every terrain.
And at a time when other manufacturers are merging their aero and lightweight models, Cervélo has unashamedly made the S5 as aerodynamic and stiff as possible. Sculpted frame shapes, wide tubing and that now iconic Star Trek-esque handlebar all reduces the bike’s drag by 65g, according to Cervélo.
For all its aero prowess, the S5 eschews one notable aero trend in the peloton: one piece bar and stems. While it has the looks of a one piece unit, the Cervélo’s complex front end is actually two separate pieces, with the V-shaped stem attaching via bolts to the underside of the bar. Fit can then be directly adjusted using spacers. It’s a design that won’t make the Visma Lease-A-Bike mechanics the envy of the pits, but it has been proven to work. In 2022, Van Aert chalked up the highest ever points tally in the history of the Tour, categorically winning the green jersey and two stages in the process.
The frame is optimised for use with the Reserve 52/63 wheels, which Cervélo says saves a further five watts thanks to its turbulent aero design. By mapping varying real world wind conditions, Cervélo can then duplicate these in the wind tunnel, allowing its testing to be more accurate.
The Vittoria Corsa Pro Speed tyres used here measure 29mm, although thanks to the wide 25mm internal width on the Reserve wheels they likely measure closer to 30mm in real life. The trend in the peloton is certainly for wider tyres, with frames and wheelsets now being designed around fatter rubber. They’re also set up tubeless, another common trend in the pro peloton.
When compared to Shimano, SRAM has been much more vociferous in its support of single ring setups and Visma Lease-A-Bike has opted for them when the parcours permit – preferring to take the aero benefit of a 1x setup and the reduced chance of dropping a chain.
Here, Van Aert has his built with a 54t aero chainset. While he’s unlikely to swap to his R5 for the mountains, we would expect to see a double ring equipped.
The eye-catching paint job is an homage to Florence, the birthplace of the renaissance and progressive thinking as well as host to this year’s Grand Départ.
Van Aert’s next opportunity for victory at this Tour comes on stage 16, with a flat finish in Nîmes. It remains to be seen what Van Aert might be able to do in the Alps if permitted the opportunity by both his team leader and his legs, to go for a mountainous break.
