The story behind Strade GT
Every new product launch in cycling seems to come with the same two claims. “3W faster and 50g lighter.” Once you see it, you can’t miss it! We joke amongst the team that it’s basically a must-have these days. But we do get it, aero and weight savings have been the key focus for a while now but at the same time we do need to accept that these improvements are becoming increasingly marginal.
So when we kicked off our next generation wheel development project a couple of years ago, we started asking ourselves a different question: where is the next genuine leap in wheel performance going to come from?
The concept
Our thesis was materials. Not a handful of tweaks and refinements to our existing carbon layup, but opening up beyond a standard carbon fibre composite and looking at other options.
To begin with, we wanted to dig deeper into more sustainable alternatives to carbon fibre. It’s one of cycling’s “dirtier secrets” that the actual manufacturing process behind a carbon product is often incredibly energy intensive, not to mention the lack of an end-of-life option for the product that doesn’t involve just throwing it away.
So we started spending time at composites and materials trade shows and it was at ICS in Milton Keynes (of all the glamorous locations!) that we first met the team from Lineat. They were presenting AFFT, their reclaimed short-fibre carbon material and what struck us was not just the more sustainable nature of the material but also that they were able to retain a far higher proportion of the mechanical properties of virgin carbon.
Looking further still, something more exciting emerged. Short-fibre composites are known to behave differently to the continuous-fibre carbon used in standard rims and some of those differences pointed towards the possibility of a vibration damping effect that hadn’t previously been seen in the cycling work. What started out as a sustainability-driven project had suddenly become far more exciting!
The testing
An engineers instinct is to be professionally suspicious of any claim not backed up by meaningful data. When rider feedback from our first prototypes suggested a change or an improvement to ride feel, the team’s instinct wasn't to get excited but to design a test rigorous enough to disprove it. If the feedback survived that, it would be worth talking about publicly.
But whilst we've previously focused on testing aero performance, this would be a new one. Vibration measurement in cycling isn't standardised and there's no established methodology to reach for, so we had to think carefully about what we were actually trying to measure and what "better" would genuinely mean for a rider out on the road.
Fortunately, we've worked with Nottingham Trent University on multiple projects over the years and the team have become our go-to resource for this kind of testing, from real-world wind condition analysis to handling stability.
The test protocol used dual accelerometers measuring simultaneously at the handlebar and saddle, capturing real-world vibration transmission across a range of tyre pressures. The data was analysed using power spectral density methods, focusing on the frequency window most associated with rider fatigue, where cumulative vibration has the most impact on how a rider feels after multiple hours in the saddle.
The results were consistent. The Lineat Composites-based rim outperformed our standard construction in that comfort band. It even became clear that the response could be "tuned" to better suit a specific tyre pressure range, in this case to match road riding.
The challenge then became a practical one: how do you communicate that finding to a rider in a way that actually means something? Tyre pressure is something every cyclist has an intuitive relationship with, so that became our translation tool. The data pointed to an equivalence of around 10 to 15 psi. Ride Strade GT at your normal pressure, and the vibration profile is comparable to dropping your pressure by that amount on a standard rim, without the handling or rolling resistance trade-offs that actually doing so would bring.
The execution
Combining multiple composite materials in a single rim during lay-up is genuinely hard. The Lineat recycled short-fibre carbon behaves differently to the conventional continuous-fibre carbon used in the rest of the rim structure, and making them work together consistently without compromising structural integrity required several iterations in prototyping. Days on the factory floor with our manufacturing partner were spent working through the exact process we'd be using for VibraCORE rims. That hands-on relationship with the manufacturing process has become one of our real strengths as a business over the past decade.
The spoke specification presented its own challenge. A carbon spoke felt right for Strade GT, taking advantage of the vibration damping properties of the material and delivering a meaningful reduction in system weight. Parcours switched to Alpina steel spokes across our range last year and the relationship had been excellent, so they were the natural partner to approach about developing something suitable here. Getting the interface between carbon spoke, rim and hub geometry right is not trivial, and that collaboration was central to arriving at the final specification.
The hub followed the same philosophy. Our hub supplier worked with us on a design built specifically for this project rather than adapted from an existing platform. At this level of product, adapting existing components won't cut it. Everything needs to be considered as a system.
The result is a wheel where the engineering runs all the way through, from material science to manufacturing process to component selection.
The delivery
There's a moment in any development project where you stop asking whether it works and start actually finding out. For Strade GT, that moment came when the first test riders got on the bikes.
Early ride feedback is rarely unambiguous. Test rides are by their nature quite short, conditions vary, and most riders are polite and want to be positive. So it was genuinely surprising when, independently, every test rider, journalist and brand partner who got on a Strade GT-equipped bike said the same thing: they could feel the difference within the first few hundred metres.
Not after an hour. Not once they'd tuned into it. Within the first few hundred metres.
One media voice noticed the reduction in buzz immediately, finding the difference even more pronounced at speed on rough chipseal. Another's immediate sensation was of a smoother road surface, as if someone had taken the edge off the roughness. A third reported the same "first few hundred metres" reaction. Three publications, three different routes, three riders who had no reason to agree with each other.
It makes sense when you understand what VibraCORE is actually doing. Aerodynamic gains don't announce themselves in the first bend of a test ride. Weight savings are largely placebo at the margins of modern wheel design. But vibration damping, real and measured, is something the body registers immediately, even before the brain has caught up.
That feedback matters for reasons beyond validation. It confirms we've been asking the right question. The next leap in wheel performance isn't going to come from shaving another watt or another gram. It's going to come from building products that make riders faster by making them less fatigued, that let you arrive at the final climb with something left because the road hasn't taken it from you.
Strade GT is our clearest statement yet of where Parcours is going as a brand. It is the result of asking questions properly, and being prepared to follow the answers wherever they led. The result is a wheel that does something genuinely new for the rider.
