Was there a problem with the SL6? Certainly not, and by all means of analysis, it remains at the very top of all available race bikes today. But we wouldn’t let that hold us back from trying to push this evolution even further, especially when there is momentum to be gained by taking what was typically a two-bike scenario down to one.

World Tour racers are a fickle bunch and they are continually looking for ways to improve and find every advantage available to them. This often times provides us with some of the most valuable insights and, consequently, turns them into our Insight Engine that unlocks what’s next. This bike is the perfect example of those requests coming to life.

“This is the type of project engineers equally love and hate. Hate because all the priorities seem to be opposing each other, love because it’s challenges like this that allow us to design right on the edge,” states Nadia Carroll, Active Engineering. It’s an apt metaphor because that edge is where the SL7 lives, that edge is exactly what rocketing through a corner, or holding on for dear life while sprinting for the finish line, feels like. That edge is racing.

It is worth noting that every year the races on the professional circuit get faster and include more climbing. This is just a reality that goes along with increasing the spectatorship of the sport. It presents a unique series of challenges for the riders each time they take to the start line. Do they swing a leg over the Venge for an aero tubeset that saves time on the flats and crushes into headwinds, or climb on the Tarmac for the lightest, best handling bike both up and down mountains?

The team that worked on Tarmac SL7 had three cloud-based super computers going day and night. Every single ply of carbon in every frame iteration required upwards of 21,000 calculations in FEA. Equivalent to millions of calculations for every frame and for every layup revision in development. Keep in mind, as a Rider-First Engineered™ bike, every size Tarmac SL7, 44-61cm, got the same treatment.

But these numbers only tell a fraction of the story, says Nadia Carroll, “It goes so much deeper than those simple numbers—especially if you pull out EVERY calculation that is running in the background of our simulation software and how many times it iterates on top of itself. Meaning there are even more calculations running in the background, so the computational hours compound on themselves. So, thinking of that time, there's no chance I could complete one of the complex rounds of calculations by hand, even if I worked on it full time for the duration of the Tarmac project.”

This level of obsession is how you combine a trio of characteristics that were previously thought to be unheard of—aerodynamic, lightweight and superior handling.

That’s where the new Tarmac SL7 comes into play.

“No cyclist wants to race a bike that has some sort of disadvantage in performance,” says Cameron Piper, Product Manager for the Tarmac SL7. “So, that was the goal - to design a bike that not only has no compromises, but in doing so, eliminates the mental aspect of even having to choose between two different bikes. As we all know, racing isn’t just about being on the best equipment and fitness, there’s also a significant mental advantage knowing everyone around you is still having to make those compromises.” Cameron makes the case not only because of the time that he spent running the Win Tunnel early in his career with Specialized, but also as a cyclist for a UCI professional team. So, you could say that he’s spent a lot of time thinking about where this bike will take him.

“Really what it came down to is the question, ‘Why can’t we have all those things in one bike?’”

Whether the road turns up, the headwinds kick in, or you’re lining it up for the closing sprint on the day, this bike is ready for anything that racing can throw at it.