All

MetaV5 frame: 8.95lbs https://www.commencal.com/us/en/frame-commencal-meta-2-2023/23CMETATR2… Tempo frame: 7.58lbs https://www.commencal.com/us/en/frame-commencal-tempo-3-2023/23CMETATC3…

Those are tires from the Specialized race tire lab with blank sidewalls. Specialized dropping their Radial tires by/at Sea Otter. Loic and Finn have likely been on custom casings for a while. Might not be full consumer Radial as those guys like a particular casing (used only in the Cannibal).

Okay detectives. Who can get a positive ID on the lip pillows Remi is packing?

Sram truly is the apple of cycling, only not as good as apple is in tech. Everyone else makes 203mm/8 inch rotors, but we're going to make 200mm because we can and because we're different. Honestly it's only really an issue because the is mount also died on frames and forks in favor of direct post mount.

Not on the list but I would def recommend EXT suspension. You can find some Storia V3 for relatively cheap and they rip. I have it on my Regulator CX (160mm rear travel) with a 65mm stroke and it's amazing. Can't recommend enough!

To go along with this, John Karrasch has been doing a lot of tire testing (via Chung method) and recently posted this one for free on his Patreon. 32" Aspen STs over rough cobbles were ~6% faster when you include rolling resistance (9% faster) and aero drag penalty of the larger wheel system. More 29” v 32” Aspen testing… Rough Cobblestones ✅ | Patreon

I bet Dario can make an amazing Americano.

For what it’s worth here’s a piece of advice that was pounded into my head when I ski raced. “Never hold a tuck at the cost of executing your turn” aka if you can’t efficiently turn while tucked, don’t tuck. It is a lot harder to actually hold a good turn tucked than you might think. Just cause these DH guys aren’t full aero stance from top to bottom doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying to optimize aero for the sections where they can be tucked.

Worth remembering tyre drag is noticeable, as is losses to smashing through rocks. A lot of the above numbers and deltas assume aero drag is the only drag force.

I'm probably on a government watch list for this chatgpt query.... but, rough math shows the terminal velocity of a child vs an adult - the adult will go about 33% faster. Scale that down however you want to world cup track speeds, but the fact remains, wind resistance cannot be disregarded when you're winning/losing races by tenths of a second. I'd go as far to as to say that wearing a speedsuit could be the difference between winning a race and not even making it past LCQ.

Didn't Pinkbike have an article ready to go before they received a legal letter? That might be why there haven't been any "bottom-getters".

I recently posted and got quite a down voting in reference to the quality of Wyn TV. One of the reasons why I posted was because of the increasing amount of engagement bait in his content. One particular example was when he interviewed Daprela in Poland, although I didn't mention it on the post. I'll still give Wyn the benefit of the doubt, at least until it should ever happen again. As far as I've seen, he's the only independent race content creator who has platformed Daprela. I certainly haven't seen him on FastAF or any other French vlogs that...

from the standpoint of an engineer, if shimano warns you against using low viscosity oil on the old models, it just means they cannot br confident enough that it works to be legally held responsible for the results since they have not tested it. Since brakes are a safety relevant component, a brake manufacturer has to run lots of tests to ensure (a guarantee is technically not possible) safe usage. The old brakes were designed and tested with the standard oil and I can see why shimano has zero motivation to run these (costly) tests for the old brakes while...

Am I the only one skeptical about Shimano’s warnings about using the new low viscosity fluid in the old brakes? So many people have reported using all sorts of low viscosity alternatives to improve the wandering bite point, from Plutoline to Redline Like Water…I have never seen a single report of a failure that resulted. Seems insane that a Shimano product would be an issue. Seems more plausible that Shimano wants to sell new brakes, not a jug of fluid that makes the old ones have improved performance on par with the new ones.

"The low-speed compression adjuster is also still a bit sticky, and the clicks are hard to feel, just like on the v1" That's not minor. V1 was the worst fork to try to set up and that didn't help. I had to wound everything to fully closed/open every time to be able to feel the detents. Impossible to do just one clock on the trail. Good for Ext that the fork actually works as it's supposed to now!

Also not American. I really started to follow Dak after hearing him on the pod and getting the behind the scenes look at the World Cup circus. I'm way more interested in those details than I am in the highly polished WB stuff. Same reason I liked Moi Moi, Wyn and Ed.

Oh thats great news!

Jess Blewitt to Gwin Racing. Confirmed. I saw them riding at the same trails over a weekend in America in early October. It looked like a big multi-team camp with some timing and suspension testing.

If Rogue racing was being help up by Daprela on the sponsorship side of things, could Angle be heading there? They ran V10's as well. They could have gotten him a frame. Mondraker did have Vero last year as well, not just 4 guys, so I could see them picking up Jess if Vero's gone. I think it would be interesting for there to be a point split between the teams and the riders at the end of the season, so the riders can retain some of their value each season for each team qualifying. Last year when they needed...