Shimano-Sram-Campagnolo ride test
Recently I have been in the privileged and fairly unique position of being able to ride four different expensive road bikes within one week.
Madison cycles very kindly flew fifty of their UK Cervelo dealers to the Canary Islands and presented their new bikes to us in the sunshine, and then gave us the opportunity to ride them. More about this later.
What did I ride?
1. Cervelo S5 Team with SRAM Red groupset and Mavic Cosmic SR wheels
2. Cervelo R5 VWD with Campagnolo Super Record and Fulcrum wheels
3. Cervelo S5 with Dura-ace Di2 and 3t carbon wheels
4. Giant TCR composite with Ultegra (I stayed out for a couple of days extra, and this is the hire bikes that the hotel has.)
I could talk about the differences between all these bikes all day long, please pop into the Leatherhead store and ask me about them. I will summarise my thoughts about the groupsets here, but please realise that these are all very top end bikes, and all of them worked really nicely, choosing between them is a personal thing, and what I like may not be to everyone’s taste. I would be happy to own any of them (except the Giant:))
Ergonomics
This is the main thing that sets the groupset manufacturers apart, how the shifter fits into your hand. They are all really really similar, Shimano and SRAM feel quite large in the hand, and failry similar, Campy just ‘fits’ the way the horn is curved feels lovely to hold.
Method of Shifting
All the gears worked well and were indexed correctly. Both Shimano groupsets were the smoothest shift by far. The Di2 being the fastest and crispest. The SRAM Red up-shift was lovely and fast, but personally I really can’t get used to the double tap down shift, doesn’t feel intuitive and smooth to me, much more ‘clunky’. Campy Super record, fast, accurate, separate buttons to perform each shift, and you can really feel the chain snaking smoothly across the cassette into gear, just lovely gear shifting. Front mech shifting on the Shimano groupsets was sublime, far and away better than the others, with SRAM lagging way behind.
Braking
All the bikes were set up with the front brake on the left, wrong way round for me, so I wasn’t totally happy with the braking on any bike.
This is really highlighted when doing 75 kph with Canary Island side winds on deep carbon wheels! I felt that the SRAM brakes had great power but were a little wooden. The Shimano 105 brakes/Ultegra levers were lacking power, and I really dislike the brake lever swinging left and right as well as fore-aft. The dura-ace Di2 brakes and levers were really good, powerful and accurate (and the levers move in and out in one plane only). The Campy brakes were not as high power as the Shimano, but had loads of feel and modulation.
So what was my favourite? Can you guess? Campagnolo all the way. I love the feel of the gear shift, the ergonomics and the braking. Add to that the look and aesthetics of the groupset and I would feel happiest spending a lot of money on Super Record/Record/Chorus. A very close second is the Di2, precise and perfect shifting. SRAM, works well, but just not for me, Tom and Carl disagree with me, but as I said earlier, this is all my personal ride feelings. Ultegra, yes it is good, but not as good as the others, the top end groupsets really are better, you pays your money…you makes your choice.
Written by Dave Farmer
