Cervelo R5-CX | Cervelo Cyclocross Bike

The cyclocross season is very much now under way and Cervélo have released the new R5-CX. Cervélo says the bike was designed specifically for Team Jumbo-Visma riders Marianne Vos and Wout Van Aert, who hold 10 cyclocross world championship titles between them. The R5-CX is currently only available to the pros , but will be released to the general public this summer, making it Cervélo’s first production cyclocross bike.

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Cervélo say that the R5-CX draws most of its inspiration from the Cervélo R5 Road Bike, the new R5-CX Cyclocross bike has a number of key differences in terms of its design - thanks to Vos and Van Aert’s input.

The R5-CX comes with a threaded bottom bracket, which is unusual for Cervélo, alongside a double seatpost clamp and plenty of tyre clearance. The geometry of the bike makes some concessions to cyclocross. It retains the same reach as the R5 road bike, but has a lower stack height.

The Cervelo R5-CX features the same D-shaped seatpost as the Cervélo R5, with the engineers at Cervélo saying that the R5-CX was originally meant to have a standard, round seatpost, as with the Cervélo Aspero, but the D-shaped seatpost was requested personally by Vos and Van Aert, presumably because they are familiar and get on well with the D-shaped design on the R5 road bike. Cervelo has fitted the R5-CX with not one, but two securing seatpost clamps – one that sits on the frame as expected and a second that bites onto the D-shaped seatpost itself, at the request of the Jumbo-Visma riders. One of the reasons for the extra clamp mounted on the seatpost is to ensure that you get exactly the right saddle height after removing the post. Saddle height also isn’t affected by the heavy bumps the riders are likely to put through the saddle during a race, for example when riding over rough ground or after less-than-perfect remounts.

At the moment, the Cervelo R5-CX is compatible with electronic drivetrains only and cable routing is internal, which Cervélo says is to minimise water ingress - understandably when you're trudging through the mud! The bike that the pro's are using is fitted with a top-of-the-line Shimano Dura-Ace Groupset and Wheels. For UCI-sanctioned cyclocross events, the maximum tyre size is 33mm, which is what we have seen fitted to the R5-CX so far. The frame is said to have ample clearance to help shed mud and could likely take much larger tyres, but choosing to maximise that clearance with a bigger tyre size may affect the R5-CX’s handling.