Just In: Lapierre Audacio 200

The £799.99 Lapierre Audacio 200 has arrived for review; let’s take a quick look before taking it out on the road.

The Audacio is Lapierre’s entry-level road bike. There are four different models in the range, all built around the same 6061 aluminium frame and carbon/alloy fork. The range kicks off with the Shimano Claris equipped Audacio 100 (£679.99) and goes right up to the Audacio 500 (£1,049) which is built up with Shimano’s mid-level 105 groupset. The Audacio 200 features Shimano Sora components, but we’ll come back to those in a minute.

The aluminium frame has a top tube that arcs slightly as it drops from head tube to seat tube, and a teardrop profiled down tube. The bottom bracket and the cabling are both external, as you’d probably expect on a bike of this price. All of the welds look neatly done, and the same goes for the Team FDJ paint job. 

We have the large sized model here with a 550mm seat tube, a 565mm top tube, and a 180mm head tube. The head angle is 73° and the seat angle is 72.5°. The stack (the vertical distance from the centre of the bottom bracket to the top of the head tube) is 579mm and the reach (the horizontal distance between those two points) is 382mm.

Dividing the stack by the reach gives you a figure of 1.52 (on this particular size; it varies between sizes). That suggests quite an upright ride position by road bike standards. For comparison, the Lapierre Xelius EFi 200 race bike that we reviewed last year had a stack/reach of 1.44 thanks to a 5mm longer top tube that and a 10mm shorter head tube.

A fairly relaxed ride position is common on bikes of this price. The idea is to provide more comfort and less back/neck strain than a more aggressive setup. You might not find yourself in such an aerodynamically efficient position as you would with a full-on race bike but, on the other hand, if it allows you to carry on cycling in comfort for longer, that might be a concession worth making.

As mentioned, the Lapierre Audacio 200 features a Shimano Sora groupset. If you’re not familiar with the hierarchy, Shimano’s most affordable road groupset is 8-speed Claris, and 9-speed Sora comes in above that. 

Unusually, the Audacio 200 comes with a triple chainset. You get a 50-tooth chainring along with 39-tooth and 30-tooth rings. The cassette ranges from 11-tooth up to 30-tooth. That means that as well as some pretty large gears to keep you moving fast on long, open descents, you get some very small gears too. If you work in such things, the smallest gear on offer here is just 26.4in. Some people find a triple chainset more fiddly than a double, but it might be a good choice if you want all the help you can get to keep moving on the climbs. Turn that smallest gear at 80 pedal revolutions per minute and you’ll only go at just over 6mph, but at least you won’t be walking.

The brakes aren’t from the Sora groupset, they’re Promax RC 481 dual pivot callipers. We’ve not used them before so we’ll be very interested to find out how they perform out on the road. 

The hubs aren’t Sora either, they’re from the entry level Claris groupset and they’re laced with 32 spokes per wheel to Mach1 CFX rims. The tyres are Michelin Dynamic Sport in a 25mm width, 25mm having become the default option for road riding over the past few years. 

As is usually the case at this price point, the handlebar, stem and seatpost are all in-house aluminium options. The saddle is branded, though. It’s a Selle Italia X1 which you’ll find on some bikes priced considerably higher than this: the £1,649 Wilier GTR Team Endurance 105 that we reviewed recently, for example, and the £1,474 Tifosi Cavazzo gravel bike.

Our complete bike hit the road.cc Scales of Truth at 9.98kg (22.0lb).

Of the bikes that we’ve reviewed on road.cc recently, the closest in price to the Lapierre Audacio 200 is the £750 B’Twin Ultra 700 AF. That bike has a triple-butted aluminium frame with internal cable routing and a press-fit bottom bracket (very unusual at this kind of money). It’s built up with a Shimano 105 groupset which is astonishing value.

The Verenti Technique Tiagra (£650) is made from 6061 aluminium alloy with a hydroformed top tube and down tube. The groupset is Shimano Tiagra, one above the Audacio’s Sora and one below the B’Twin’s 105. Again, we think it’s an excellent bike for the money. The Lapierre has a lot of competition, then, in a busy sector of the market.

Right, this bike isn’t going to ride itself; we’d better head out there and get amongst it. We’ll be back with a review on road.cc shortly.

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