Trek Launches New Speed Concept

Trek’s new Speed Concept has not been a well-kept secret, but that's what happens when you've got eager and faithful customers. Trek tends to release its new products to its partner athletes for in-race use prior to the official launch, and pics of those bikes invariably leak. When you see a lot of leak activity, that tells you it’s a product people really want.

The discussion thread on our Reader Forum about the new Speed Concept has 350 or so posts as I’m writing this, that is, before the launch. This is distinct from the ongoing Fit Assistance Thread for all Speed Concept editions, where you give fit coordinates to a fit specialist and are guided to your correct bike size and front end config. That thread has, all told, north of 10,000 posts. I have a feeling that Fit Assistance thread is going to see a big jump in activity.

This Speed Concept arrives a decade later than the original, and 7 years after the 2014 update. This is the first disc brake Speed Concept which makes it the last really popular tri bike to get disc brakes. Trek may have been late to disc brake tri bikes, but it nevertheless had impeccable timing. Tri bikes were a hard sell during COVID because those bikes really need a race to justify the purchase, and racing was on hiatus. A huge 2022 in triathlon is a safe bet, probably the biggest year since 2015 and maybe the biggest since 2012. It will certainly be among the best years ever in equipment purchases because of the pent up demand and Trek is sitting pretty with a brand new bike.

Speed & Aerodynamics

About that report that has been getting so much attention. What is claimed is that this bike is 16 watts easier to pedal than the prior edition, and that’s a boatload when you consider how slippery that 2014 bike was. Translated to time, “The number we’re using is 6 minutes faster over the bike length of the Kona full distance course,” sez Trek. Some of this 6 minutes is the frame; some is not. Let’s get into it.

About half of that 16 watts is what happens below the “waist” of the bike, that is, at the wheels, tires, the interaction between the wheels and the fork. Some of you are going to cry foul at this, but Trek says that one-third of the speed increase is in the latest model Bontrager wheel and that’s discounting the aero increases in the wheel. It’s just rolling resistance. When I pressed the engineers on this it’s simply Bontrager’s move to a wider inner bead width. Just the move to a 23mm inner bead – just that – gets you 5 or 6 watts. That seems hard to believe. But this is what tire testing company Wheel Energy reported back (Trek relied on a third party for this). I would have some questions about protocol, but that’s a subject for another day. In any case, Bontrager joins most of the wheel brands I’ve been highlighting recently – Zipp, HED, CADEX, ENVE, Shimano and others – by moving to that inner bead width of 22mm or wider.

A bit of that 6 minutes is gained – claims Trek’s engineers and aerodynamicists – through a reworking of the handlebars. Trek returned to a pair of armrest pedestals, which were on the first Speed Concept launched in 2011, and did away with the mono-pedestal, and the wishbone extension. Thank you! I never did like that 2014 front end as much as I did the cockpit on the 2011 Speed Concept. Today’s bike is much easier to work on, adjust, travel with. More on this front end below.

Then there is the frame, which is noticeably wider in the top and down tubes than the old Speed Concepts. But these tubes do more than just serve as a skeleton for the bike. Note that top tube storage is not above the top tube, but inside of it. Likewise, the flat kit moves inside the down tube, and the Speed Box has been eighty-sixed by the company that developed that storage motif and made it famous.

Trek’s narrative for the aero performance of this bike is a little like Quintana Roo’s launch of a couple of weeks ago, in that the QR launch focused on the performance of the bike with the rider off. They didn’t test the bike with the rider off; they tested it with the rider on and then removed the drag of the rider from the data. Likewise, Trek spent a lot of time testing the rider’s interaction to the bike. Rather than just reworking the cockpit and testing this as a discrete bike element, Trek looked at the behavior of the air around the rider as a result of changes to the cockpit.

Trek was faithful to the original theme of this bike, certainly, which since 2011 has been the most fully integrated bike (with integrated storage, electronics, and so on). But with this bike there was a subtle difference: The performance of the bike with rider aboard appears to have been more of a focus.

Storage

The Speed Box was about drag neutral (you add the Speed Box and you don’t lose or gain any advantage). But the new Speed Concept’s storage saves about a minute on that Kona course (storage is 1 of the 6 gained minutes), and that’s why the Speed Box got the heave ho. The bike comes with the down tube frame bottle standard, but not with an aero bottle you see.

Here is the aero bottle, the between-the-arms bottle, and it looks an awful lot like the Profile Design HSF/Aero HC 800! It’s refillable, and is a part of the aero story here.

Here is the down tube storage – the flat kit storage – which sits underneath the down tube hydration bottle. There is not a lot of room here. You can fit a tube and one CO2, a tire lever, and not much else. But that’s okay, because I’m riding tubeless. I’ll omit the tube, throw in a couple more CO2s, perhaps a plug kit, and call it good.

Where you have a lot of room is in that inside-the-top-tube bento. There’s a ton of space in there and it’s hard to get that much storage in that area without it interfering with something (like my thighs, when I’m out of the saddle). I don’t like big bentos for that reason, but this one is unobtrusive because it’s inside the top tube.

The top of this bike is just clean, clean, clean and let’s face it: the one thing about the Speed Box is you can only get into it when you’re off the bike on the side of the road. So, having a clean bike while enjoying all that top tube storage is best-of-class.

Travel

You need to remove 4 bolts to pull the pursuit bar off the frame. It’s another 4 bolts to pull off the handlebar, which may be necessary. The headset top cap is a true compression cap, which is often not the case on superbikes. You tighten it down and it pulls the head parts together. I like that.

Now, if you do travel with this bike, in a bike case, on a plane, I have a recommendation. Remember, this is an electronically shifted bike. The good part of that is that the shift ables don’t run full length; there are junctions along the way.

However, everything runs internally. I recommend buying two Park Tool replacement parts out of an internal cable wiring kit. You would buy a pair of Cable with +Magnet and Di2 Adaptor Tip out of this kit (you’ll see it as #5 of the 5 pieces in the kit). When you disconnect the Di2 cables to take off the aerobar for travel you’ll plug the Di2 port into this cable, which will run through the pursuit bar.

When you get to your destination, this cable is already threaded, and you won’t need to curse as you try to fish the Di2 cable through the inside of the pursuit bar.

There is no more junction box, per se, in Shimano 9200 and 8100 (Dura Ace and Ultegra 12 speed), and all firmware and charging occurs at the rear derailleur. But neither SRAM nor Shimano is wireless yet for TT/Tri and the routing of hose and cables through this bike was well executed. Underneath the pursuit bar there’s a cache box for electric wire and junctions and here is what it looks like, along with its appearance with the door affixed.

Fit

For every Speed Concept prior to this one you had decisions to make as a consumer, to get a bike that fit you right. You had to buy the right stem – and there were 6 of them – and the right pedestal (there were 4 of them). The bike did not come with 6 stems; it came with 1 stem. If your fit migrated during your ownership of that bike you may have needed a new stem, paired with a different pedestal, and because these were Project One purchases woe unto you if you needed any of this hardware. If you sold the bike the new owner had to come up with a new stem and pedestal to fit him or her, if it wasn’t what was on the bike already.

Today’s bike has none of that stuff. There is, basically, one stem/pursuit bar combo. Most of the rise adjustment comes from pedestals under the aero bar, and there is ample length adjustment built into the system.

But your first decision is the pursuit bar. This does not add any complexity to the build, or the bike, or traveling or anything of that sort, but it does add complexity in this way: there are 3 pursuit bar options. There are 3 pursuit position heights, and they’re separated by 35mm of height at the pursuit position (the highest pursuit hand-hold is 70mm higher than the lowest). Those pursuit bars aren’t nearly as different from each other in height where the aerobars fix to them. At that point they’re only 15mm in height apart from each other.

Why this is impactful is that you’ll want a given height difference between the pad and the pursuit hand-hold, and maybe that’s (I don’t know) 70mm. If you have a lot of pedestal height under your pads you’ll want to choose the pursuit bar with the higher position. This will be a part of your fit calculus and I recommend you refer to our Speed Concept Owners Thread for advice on this before you start ordering on the Trek Project One web portal. Trek has a person monitoring that thread for just these kinds of questions.

Used to be there were 6 stem options – as discussed – and these represented 3 heights and 2 lengths. The pursuit bar sat on the stem, so, the pursuit hand-hold was longer or shorter depending on the stem chosen. What you lose in this simplifying move are the 2 length options, but the pursuit position is made overlong, and is made to be cut. The length of that hand-hold platform is the “long stem” position. If you cut it you get the “short stem.” (Please note my final remarks, regarding your reasonable Trek dealer expectations.)

Back to adjustability. As noted, the height options begin with the pursuit bars. Each pursuit bar is 15mm taller than the one below it where the pad pedestals attach. Then there are the major pedestals, in 15mm increments, up to 75mm of pad height. Then there are 5mm pedestals as well, and they are very similar to the original Speed Concept pedestals, but with slots in the pedestals to keep from having to de-cable the bike.

There is 60mm of “run” (horizontal) adjustment on the whole front end cradle, plus extra beyond that in the sliding extensions. The pads do not move fore/aft via multiple holes in the pads. The pad placement is mostly used for width adjustment. Aerobar tilt is done with pad pedestals, like these below.

There will be a fit calculator on the Speed Concept microsite. Still, unless you know exactly what you’re doing you’ll want to refer to folks who know what they’re talking about. That will be your Trek dealer in certain matters, but perhaps not so much on what bike you should buy in order to make sure it’s the right fit.

Geometry

Here it is below. I don’t see much in changes between the various Speed Concept editions. They were always very good handlers. My size, which is L, has a frame stack and reach of 541mm and 426mm respectively and each of the prior Speed Concepts in that size were exactly that.

The chain stay is longer by a centimeter and that’s only going to help the shifting, and provide a little more clearance for wider tires. You can certainly put 28mm tires on this bike and perhaps 30mm. That chain stay is really the only meaningful geometric difference.

Weight & Comfort

Trek has a comfort feature in its bikes called IsoSpeed, which “decoupled the seat tube from the top tube.” This has been a decade-long project for Trek, and you can see the ISO speed elastomer added to this bike under the the IsoSpeed tongue, for damping. Think if it like a carbon plated run shoe.

It’s hard for bike brands to get lighter with their products. They’ve already wrung the weight out of their systems. Dura Ace 9200 was no lighter than the prior edition, but, a lot of features were added. Likewise, this Speed Concept is not much if any lighter, to my scale, but a lot has been added.

It is mighty hard to get a tri bike in my larger size, with pedals, and hydration, to 20 pounds. This one, with Wahoo Speedplay stainless steel pedals, computer and mount, down tube bottle, built-in top tube storage, rear Varia radar, is at 20.77lb. The only thing this bike lacks is a front hydration system.

Spec & Pricing

There are 5 groupkits for this bike, all 12-speed, both Shimano kits – Dura Ace and Ultegra – and all 3 SRAM upper end groupkits: Rival, Force and RED. As you know, all groupsets are “wireless” from the shifters back to the derailleurs, but none of these are wireless yet for triathlon. (They're working on it!)

The frameset is $5,000, but buying that makes no sense these days because you can’t get any parts. Best is to purchase the whole bike. Trek calls these bikes Speed Concept SLR (the tri version) and Speed Concept TT (for their pro teams and other time trialists). Yes, there are differences but I’m omitting mention of the TT, which lacks the stuff we need (like storage). The SLR have numbers affixed: SLR 6, SLR 7, SLR 9. This appears only to refer to the groupset.

The SLR 6 has a SRAM Rival eTap AXS groupset and and the prices are $8,800 (minus a penny) for Rival eTap AXS; for $9,500 you get Ultegra 8100; it’s SRAM Force eTap AXS for $10,000 and then you’re up to a penny under $14,000 for either Dura Ace 9,200 or SRAM RED eTap AXS. Mind, a lot of the parts are common to these groupsets, specifically shifters and TT levers. Both Shimano and SRAM make only one level of tri shifter, so when you buy Rival groupset it’s mostly a crank, derailleur and cassette difference. As chains and cassettes are consumables anyway, a really good way to save money is to go Rival or Force on this bike (if you’re thinking SRAM).

About those kits: What I’ve seen on the official docs are Bontrager Aeolus RSL 51mm road wheel, throughout, all the build kits. This isn’t correct. Mind, that’s a really nice wheel, DT Swiss star ratchet inners, 23mm inner bead width, tubeless ready. But on the Project One configurator you’ll be given a range of wheel options, including the 62mm and 75mm options. You will probably, eventually if not sooner, be given 3rd party wheel options. Tires? We’ll see. But don’t get indignant if you only see the 51mm wheel option listed. You’ll have choices, and the prices will vary as well as you select in different options in the configurator.

The bottom bracket standard is T47, there are some religious differences between folks on this, but I personally like that BB standard, mostly because it’s easy to get a BB out if and when you need to (versus pressfit).

Reasonable LBS Expectations

If this were a consumer direct bike I would encourage you to get it the way that Ventum and Quintana Roo are sending out their bikes: no box, built, white glove, door to door. Further, the way that Quintana Roo does it via its Fit Ready program, where you get it built exactly to your specs. But Trek has retailers, and this is a big win for you if you avoid what you should avoid, and use what you should use. Here’s what you may want to avoid: Having your Trek retailer prescribe the bike you need. Why? Because – and I’m going to break some china here – Trek is very, very good at bike fit at the engineering level. Trek’s engineers have always been best-of-class in understanding how bikes should fit, specifically tri bikes. However, the engineers aren’t who’s talking to and training the bike dealers. The engineers never had much if any intersection with Trek’s fit systems. Therefore, it’s the exceptional Trek retail store owner/manager who understands which size Speed Concept you need and with which pursuit bar. If you have that exceptional LBS at your disposal, great. Otherwise, double-check that shop’s prescription by using the resources here that I’ve described above.

Here’s what Trek does do well: train its retailers in literally the nuts & bolts of its bikes. Your Trek LBS should deliver your Project One Speed Concept to you exactly to your fit coordinates, with the pursuit bar mitered to length. Use this resource. You don’t want to do this work. Your bike fitter is good at fitting you; your Trek store is better at making this bike conform to your fit coordinates. If your Trek dealer doesn’t deliver this bike to your precise fit coordinates, the bike is not ready for you to take possession. Your Trek dealer is making a margin on this bike, and because it’s a Project One purchase there is no risk to him or her. Therefore, make sure that margin is earned, and this is how it's best earned in my opinion.

Here is the new Speed Concept on Trek's site.

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