Team Sky races with disc brakes for the first time

Disc brakes? Electronic gears? Carbon bars? All I know is the price of traditional cable and brake Campag Super Record is dropping all the time so keep on buying the latest 'evolutions' and I'll be quids in.

Don't understand the rush for thro axles on road bikes. Surely a better way would to increase the clamping area of the QR and hub on the left side. It works on older mtbs.

"Good news? Bad news? Let us know what you think."

Well, you did ask!

I'd like to see thru-axles if they were one of the newer, part-turn devices like the RAT as you'd get something quicker and easier than a QR on the front with the benefits of alignment - and (purely personally) I think they're a nice bit of engineering.

In the racing situation the initial line up of the rotor will take a bit longer, part of which will be technique (e.g. lift the front by the caliper and using your fingers to guide it in) so it's swings and roundabouts I guess. I imagine we'll find out what the teams think in due course, even if potentially diluted by sponsor commitments by some of them. In one way it would perhaps be nice if they did get the OK in racing insofar as allowing manufacturers more resource and incentive to improve with the knock-on benefits for the rest of us - not to mention the outside chance of actually standardising things (although i'll not hold my breath on that). My tuppence worth anyway.

@part_robot

I've been riding a hydraulic disc brake road bike since October last year - my only road bike

I agree somewhat with comments about Q/R and disc brakes.

I've had situations where I've done a lot of heavy braking and I believe the wheels have shifted slightly in the dropouts as I then get small amounts of rotor noise, which vanishes if I stop, loosen the Q/R, shimmy the wheel in the frame / fork and re tighten the Q/R. I've tried different Q/R skewers but it makes little to no difference.

I also get small amount of rotor noise (tinkling) on the front if I sprint really aggressively and honk the bars from side to side.

Otherwise I have been extremely happy with disc brakes on my road bike, for my riding (not a racer) they are a progressive move forward. I would like to see thru-axles front and rear as the next step.

But I come from 20+ years of mountain biking and we've had hydraulic disc brakes for along time (my first hydro discs were in 1995). Other riders who have a road background may have a different opinion on disc brakes.

Regarding weight? My current road bike is exactly 8kg with pedals, exactly the same weight as my previous caliper brake road bike. Both were mid priced (£2,500) bikes.

My experience with hydraulic disc roadbikes with QR echo others here; they are fantastic in the rain (I didn't realise how good until I went out on a very wet and windy day with our club recently), but they rub slightly when they are knocked and occasionally when replacing the wheel. Also, if you are unfortunate enough to have a fall expect to spend a couple of minutes tweaking them by sub-millimeter increments. They also add a LOT of weight which isn't ideal.

Overall, a mixed blessing but I think I slightly prefer them to normal callipers. In an ideal world I'd have disc brakes on a winter bike and normal callipers in summer.

I've ridden with hydra disc all summer. They come into their own on long descents and in wet weather. The improvement is an evolution for the road performance - regardless of looks.
When hitting a hole or stone I've had to stop to adjust my wheel with the disc rubbing several times so do think bolt thru axel is the way forward. Not sure how you get a quick wheel change thou in the pro peloton. Don't know how the mavic neutral service car is going to cope with Giants thru axel, Sky on quick release, Merida developing a larger diameter thru axel. The Uci should have made a ruling to push for some standard...... But no money In that

and through-axles are meant to make it less likely that the braking forces will pop the front axle downwards out of the drop outs. Whether that's a consideration on road bikes (which presumably will have their front wheels on the ground all the time when braking) I have no idea.

I'd like to know what Bernie Eisel thinks now he's raced with discs.

Through axles are rather more to do with the way suspension forks tend to be affected by the one sided effect of disc brakes. They also stiffen up the whole front end which may or not be a help on a road bike with, hopefully, stiff enough forks.

Come again? The torque is applied on one side of the axle, which produces a twisting force.

Twisting at the rim isn't the problem, only a symptom.

It's because the disc is on one side of the wheel; trying to stop it produces a twisting force. That stresses both the wheel and the fork as well as, potentially, the axle and QR (hence the fashion for thru-axles instead).

The same twisting force - and resulting stress - doesn't apply to rim-braking, as the callipers press (more-or-less) evenly on both sides.

Regardless of the disc/no disc issue, I can't think of anyone other than Stevie Wonder who would consider Pinarellos to be aesthetically pleasing.

Helen Keller's favourite bike...

What's the WEIGHT of the bike? We all want to know...

What spacing are the drop outs, 130, 135 or 140mm?

And presumably STIs as good as their cable ancestors?

Where are the brake fluid reservoirs?

Bike with no name - I've got the Spesh Diverge as my commuter/winter bike and the discs make perfect sense. Bike gets a lot of comments too about how 'cool' / 'mean' it looks.

I'm so hipster it hurts, unfortunately my beard growing prowess is poor!

Another fun part of disc brakes is watching my clubmates faces as I pile past them downhill and brake so much later than them...

Beast.

MY EYES! I know I'm swimming against the crowd, but discs look stupid on road bikes.

That said it is still it's a 1000% better looking than that Spesh VIAS venge and the new crop of #aeroisugly machines...

I want

how to ruin a good looking bike quickly...