This year’s Paris-Roubaix continued the classics trend that has seen most of the main contenders switch out traditional front-derailleur equipped bikes for simpler 1x setups.
It makes sense for races that are both tough on equipment and shy of serious elevation.
While Paris-Roubaix is a long race at around 250km, the relative lack of elevation means for pro riders it's big ring all the way – even more so now we have wider 12-speed or 13-speed cassettes, offering greater range.
With the apparent success of going 1x, I could easily see the teams that have the budget preparing 1x bikes for the flatter stages in the Tour de France, for example.
The Tour usually has around six to eight days in the mountains over its 21 days, so there’s lots of scope to use 1x drivetrains for the flatter days.
That said, Shimano-sponsored teams’ use of officially unsupported 1x solutions means it's high time the Japanese brand embraced the setup on the road.
SRAM has the range, Shimano has to make it up
SRAM has the jump on Shimano when it comes to 1x. With the almost universal adoption of its UDH (Universal Derailleur Hanger), SRAM has a premium direct-mount rear derailleur ready to go with gravel-oriented Red XPLR AXS.
Even though Campagnolo isn’t sponsoring a pro tour team this year, it is better prepared than Shimano with its 1x13 Super Record gravel groupset.
Of course, wildcard Cofidis opted for the 2x variant of Super Record 13 for its bikes, so 2x isn’t quite out of the picture yet.
It made for some very interesting choices for Shimano-supported riders, though, with teams such as Ineos Grenadiers and Team TotalEnergies mixing and matching mountain bike derailleurs from Shimano’s premium XTR MTB groupset, and Shimano GRX gravel rear derailleurs, with Dura-Ace cranksets (minus their inner rings).
Shimano may, of course, have this all in hand with, if the patents and leaks are to be believed, updates coming to its gravel offerings, while adding an extra sprocket.
Historically, Shimano hasn’t embraced the mix-and-match approach that has defined SRAM’s AXS ecosystem.
Perhaps that’s going to change based on what we’ve seen at Roubaix this year. I can’t believe the Shimano I know from previous years would have been happy to sanction this level of experimentation.
The question is why?
You could ask, ‘why change?'. After all, 2x drivetrains are tried and tested and we know they work. However, I’d argue that the weakest link in any drivetrain is the front derailleur and double-chainring interface.
There’s a lot of motion going through this area, and the front shift – even on the very best equipment – is an imperfect movement. It effectively shovels the chain off one set of teeth onto another over a significant gap.
Yes, the rear derailleur performs a similar job, but mis-shift there and you stand a far greater chance of landing on a sprocket and having drive. At the front, it's 50/50 – or put another way, it either shifts correctly or you lose significant drive or ship a chain entirely.
A dropped chain at the front isn’t easy to cure, and if you get the dreaded chain suck, you’re in a world of trouble.
If team principals and technical staff can eliminate one element of complexity and risk, they should. Using 1x setups does just that.
The future for the road
For 1x to succeed completely in road racing, all the drivetrain providers will need more cassette options. SRAM offers a 10-44t and a 10-46t, but I can see lots of pros wanting tighter. We’ve already seen XPLR derailleurs modified to be compatible with 12-speed road AXS cassettes.
The simple solution would be to go 13-speed with SRAM's road Red AXS, but that brings up further front-shift challenges.
It certainly won’t be the end of the 2x setup, but I can see 1x becoming even more normalised outside of the abnormal races that define the early-season classics.
1x had a false-start back in 2018 with Aqua Blue Sport and the 3T Strada. Complaints around not having the gear range for multi-stage events proved true.
Better funding and planning could have mitigated some of those problems, but now a wider range of gearing choices essentially solves these issues.
The elephants in the room are solutions such as Classified, taking the weak link out of 2x systems, but still having the same effective gearing. I’d be surprised if none of Classified’s rivals, or the more mainstream manufacturers, aren’t working on ideas to eliminate the front derailleur in the same manner.
1x is on the rise, albeit slowly
Outside of the peloton, we’ve seen the advent of off-the-peg 1x road options for non-pro riders, initially, with smaller boutique brands such as 3T and the UK’s own Vielo. Now, global brands have options – Cannondale with the Lab71 Synapse and Cervélo offers the S5 in a Wout Van Aert-like spec with SRAM Red XPLR AXS.
For the pro tour, it both feeds off mainstream bike sales, and sets trends. I’m hoping the 1x trend will extend beyond the classics – let's face it, half of the distances of the grand tours could be ridden just as fast on 1x outside of mountain stages.
Even a couple of years ago, if you’d have said to me a cutting-edge pro-race geometry aero road bike would come with a 1x gravel groupset, you’d have been asked politely to leave the room.
