After months of hypothesis, XDS Astana has revealed its new look and new X-Lab race bike for the 2025 season, marking the arrival of a Chinese language model within the males’s WorldTour.
The Astana crew has secured main funding from the Chinese language model XDS Carbon Tech, who’ve historically produced carbon frames and elements for different manufacturers and targeted on the Chinese language market. within the 2025 XDS will go world and the XDS Astana crew will race on the model’s X-Lab bikes.
We acquired a primary concept about what the brand new bikes would appear like again in early November after seeing some promotional materials on-line, however the actual body, part and even color of the crew bikes have been unknown till now.
A video was posted of the brand new crew bike on the crew’s Instagram web page in addition to a information merchandise on the Astana web site after an official presentation of the deal and the crew’s new identification and jersey in Shenzhen, China.
Alongside the brand new X-Lab bike, the crew is retaining nearly all of its current gear companions and lightweight blue colors.
The X-Lab body within the crew video is fitted with Shimano Dura-Ace groupsets, Imaginative and prescient Metron wheels, Continental tyres and Imaginative and prescient-integrated handlebars. This could imply the crew’s riders will not need to get used to too many gear adjustments all of sudden.
The X-Lab AD9
We do not know an excessive amount of concerning the X-Lab AD9 bike for now. There are not any aero testing claims, no carbon fibre grade and on data on the right way to purchase one.
The XDS web site shows the AD street vary, however solely as much as the AD7 sequence mannequin, no AD9 is at present listed. (that we are able to discover) Maybe the AD9 is a brand-new mannequin for the crew.
We additionally surprise if the AD9 body is about to turn out to be essentially the most reasonably priced bike within the WorldTour, the AD7 bike listed on the XDS web site has an inventory worth of ¥22980 or £2,498.87 / $3,156.81. That’s for what seems to be a carbon fibre body, wheels and Sram Rival AXS. We are going to embrace AD9 body pricing as quickly as we obtain it.
One other mannequin additionally options within the crew’s press launch picture which appears to be like like extra of a normal non-aero street body. This can be an possibility for crew riders, however we assume they may race for essentially the most half on the aero AD9.
The body silhouette appears to be like unsurprising and has a number of acquainted design options. Dropped seat stays, aero fork legs, a deep and aero head and down tube, an aero seatpost, a seat tube cutout and a skinnier high tube all function. This implies the AD9 ought to look proper at house subsequent to its different WorldTour counterparts.
It has been reported that the crew’s new efficiency engineer Alex Dowsett has examined the brand new bike on the Silverstone Sports activities Engineering Wind Tunnel. The identical place we performed our World Superbike aero take a look at.
Cyclingews has contacted XDS for extra data on the X-Lab vary.
