specialized is just rolling with the punches on this one. I like that.
I don’t see a hard tail, this, full suspension comparison, so I take it the savings on this is a yoke weight???
The sag bull**** is raging nonsense.
Hopefully they’ll announce it soon so I can determine if I need to cancel my Scott Spark that is supposed to arrive in late May 2023. I really want the new Supercaliber to be 120 front and 100-110 rear. As of now Trek is really missing a “down country” race bike.
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Seems to me that would be an entirely new model. Supercaliber is the soft tail, I can’t imagine they would use that name for a longer travel XC racer.
But the Top Fuel is probably too close to what you’re asking for to make sense to create a new model. I wouldn’t expect anything like what you want from trek and time soon.
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I’m a little surprised that the WC is heavier than the Epic Evo. Claimed weight for the s-works evo frame is 1659g and the new bike is 1765g. That shock and mounting hardware must be porky!
Seems like the Epic and Epic WC will be similar weight and Evo with the same parts is a bit lighter. So I mean Evo with 100mm fork which puts it at the same geometry as the standard Epic pretty much and should enable getting more weight on the front tire for courses where corning is the priority over needing 120mm front.
Here’s an Evo build I was playing with to compare the build cost vs stock S-works. Seems like 20-21 lb Evo is quite achievable, could save a good amount of money using slightly heavier parts than this list.
Earlier this week someone in some FB group posted their evo build that was sub 20lbs. Crazy it wasn’t even an SW. Didnt even look like they used boutique parts
Given how light you can get an Evo I’m been really struggling to see why this bike exists. At equivalent weight, seems like riding an Evo locked out on climbs and full open on descents would be significantly more capable and versatile.
My theories on why it does exist are:
- They need to make bikes for the top pros and/or people with money to burn on having the absolute most-specific bike for certain event types and who don’t care about versatility
- The midwest and south exist. There is a decent sized market of people who would never use the additional travel of a more capable bike and would rather have something that feels fast on non-technical terrain.
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I reckon the 2023 Top Fuel is decidedly parked where the Fuel/Fuel EX was just a year ago. Even on their own description they call it Trail/Enduro.
How they free up/repurpose the name I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they put something back in where the Top Fuel was supposed to be.
Supercaliber EX?
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I vote for Super Fuel!
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Supercalibre EVO surely. What’s good for the Goose… etc
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or… Trek Top Fuel World Cup 
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Just to play devil’s advocate in response to the comments of the epic WC only having 75 mm of rear suspension, the Scott spark RC in traction control (pedal) mode only has 80 mm of rear travel and is generally considered a benchmark bike in the xc world. Based on some data (i.e. marketing material) From Scott for Nino at Lenzerheide, he spent 54% of the time in this mode, 18% fully locked and the rest open. You could argue that the Epic WC covers the fully locked and traction modes (for a total of 72% of the course) while saving the 160 lever actuations.
Of course the spark still has the option to go to the full 120 mm which is the real difference maker here, but I just wanted to point that out. On certain courses, this argument I am presenting will be even more favourable, but of course on others it’ll be worse (for those they have the Epic Evo though).
Either way, I dont think this is a bike I would ever buy, but I would love to try one and it gets the engineer in me excited.
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Yeah, I think the Epic WC is a clever idea and if you like the chattery sensation of HT it should be mega.
I don’t think it’d be as fast as the Spark downhill.
I’ve got friends that I just can’t convince that HT/fully locked out should be saved for smooth road/trails so something like this is perfect for those riders stuck in the hardtail life.
I could see it being a weapon on World Cup short track XC. Most of those courses are very smooth, often with just a short rock garden as the only technical portions.
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Yeah! And if you take NVMM as an example, the XCC courses are potentially going back to being less technical and more like dirt crits.
(I’m hoping very much that it’s just NVMM and not a UCI mandated change as I really enjoyed the increased technicality of the XCC races last year)
I could be wrong here, but I’m pretty sure you need to run the same bike in both XCC and XCO.
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They’re separate World Cup series, I think that’s not the case any more.
ETA: I can’t find the reference to it, I may have just assumed the change in rules with the official separation.
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Obviously 15 speeds and this creation are completely unnecessary, but an interesting anecdotal point of the new chain being backwards compatible.
Possible indication of an ability to utilise the new chain, and maybe cassette, to get the smooth shifting and increased efficiency.
(Obviously we’re still waiting to see if the new SRAM chain is an improvement or not in terms of efficiency and longevity)
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Semi related…I do sometimes wonder at what point will groupset manufacturers stop adding cogs? 13? 14? 15?
At some point I suppose we might a whole re-imagining of the drive train like the Ceramic Speed shaft thing or something like a Classified hub that has 10+ gears that are all inside the hub