Vince Feres and Bob Kirkup, North American sales reps for Carbon Sports/Lightweight Wheels, joined Serotta under the tent at the Tour of the Battenkill this weekend. We couldn't resist asking the experts for some inside info. on the hottest wheels on the market.
Serotta: Thanks for joining Serotta at the Tour of Battenkill this weekend!VF & BK: Well thank you for allowing us to hang out with you (the Serotta crew) all weekend. The race was a great way to spend the weekend and allowed us to meet and speak with a lot of consumers and racers as well.
Serotta: Serotta and Lightweight Wheels share a commitment to offering the pinnacle of performance in handcrafted carbon. What synergies do you see between the two brands?
VF & BK: Well, since Serotta is a premium brand offering some of the best handcrafted bicycles available with a strategic focus on performance, the synergies are many. CarbonSport’s Lightweight wheels are and always have been designed and built for the bicycle racers and enthusiasts seeking the absolute best technology available. Their focus is purely on performance and therefore like Serotta, Lightweight is a premium brand found only in premium shops that understand the requirements of supplying some of the best products and service available to demanding customers.
Serotta: How did Lightweight get its start?VF & BK: Lightweight wheels were originally designed and manufactured by two German engineers (Rudolf Dierl and Heinz Obermayer) in the early 1990’s, who built their wheels by hand and sold them to some of the worlds top racers (Armstrong, Ullrich, Cipollini, Museeuw, Zabel among the many). Since they both had full time day jobs, production was limited to only a few pair per year. In 1995 they developed the all carbon spoked-wheel and when the ’96 and ’97 Tour de France race was won on unbranded (due to riders contractual obligations) Lightweight wheels, the cycling world took notice. Soon the waiting time to obtain a pair of the wheels was 6 to 12 months. In 2003 Dierl and Obermayer sold their company to CabonSports GmbH, a German company who supply carbon fiber products for use in aircraft, satellites, medical technology, Formula 1 race cars and many other applications. Heinz Obermayer still works for the company in product development, and thankfully production is now a bit higher and wait times are not nearly as long.
Serotta: What is at the core of Lightweight’s design and manufacturing philosophy?
VF&BK: Lightweight’s design priorities are, in order; 1- stiffness, 2- durability, 3- lightweight and 4- aerodynamics. There are specialty handbuilt wheels as light as Lightweight’s, wheels, as stiff as Lightweight’s and as or more aerodynamic than Lightweight’s, but no other wheel has the combination of the three in one package. Add to that the almost unsurpassed durability of our wheels and you have a product unmatched in the industry. Lightweight´s design philosophy is to design and build the best wheels to offer the best compromise in lightness, stiffness and aerodynamics for people who search for the best materials available to improve in cycling. It would be pretty easy to build a wheel focusing on just one of these attributes, but you would have to give up the others. Another point is to keep the combination of German engineering and the German craftsmanship to further build special wheels for special people. One very unique aspect of producing Lightweight wheels is that there are only three people in the factory who know how to produce a complete wheelset from start to finish !
Serotta: Can you tell us about what new wheel design or models we might see in the near future?VF&BK: Well, considering the all carbon spoked wheel developed in 1995 has seen little other than incremental improvements over the years due to the already superior design, CarbonSports is not a company that introduces new products for the sake of introducing something new.
The new Lightweight Standard C (as in clincher) wheelset and the Lightweight rear derailleur (a sub 120 gram wonder) previewed a couple of years ago are now being delivered to pre-booked retailers. This year (2009) saw the introduction of the new Generation III Ventoux wheelset which introduced 100% carbon fiber spokes (previous spokes were aramid/carbon fiber) introduced last year in the Standard and Obermayer models. A new 34 gram skewer set is also now being delivered to retailers.
Understanding that the wheels are built at the edge of the possibilties of the materials used it will not be easy to further improve....but we can rely on German engineering which is always good for a surprise!
Serotta: The Battenkill annihilated over half the pro field, which Lightweight wheels would you have chosen for this race?
VF&BK: Considering the reported horrifically rough gravel sections on the race course (apparently freshly graded), the lower profile Ventoux (27 mm depth rim) wheelset would be our choice. The Ventoux is designed for high wind applications, but due to its shallower profile is also more compliant, whereas a deeper rim like the Standard or Obermayer (both 53 mm deep rims) is the more aerodynamic wheel. The Ventoux would be a much smoother ride on the rough surfaces of the Battenkill course, and of course at only 950 grams for the set would help out on the hilly sections.
Serotta: If you could build the ultimate Serotta/Lightweight ride, what would it be?
VF&BK: We’d would have to say we think you had that ultimate ride at your tent at the Battenkill expo. Your absolutely stunning new Meivici AE time trail/triathlon frame with the Lightweight disc (850 grams) and Obermayer front wheel would have to be one of the most beautiful and striking bikes we’ve seen in a long time, not to mention how smokin’ fast it would be!!!
Thanks!VF&BK: Thank you and we hope we get the chance to hang out with you and the rest of the Serotta crew again soon. Cheers!
