Wout Van Aert rode to a fourth place at the 2025 men's Paris Roubaix aboard a Cervélo Soloist, featuring the Roubaix-proven Graava KAPS hub, glued on tubeless tyres, and even a nod to his time on Belgium's version of The Masked Singer.
The choice is intriguing, because the S5 is Van Aert's usual choice race bike, but team equipment manager Jenco Drost told me that he had deemed the Soloist a better compromise between comfort and aero efficiency.
Aside from this, the wheels are where Van Aert has made most of his changes since his last appearance at the race in 2023.
His Reserve wheels now include the Graava KAPS (Kinetic Air Pressure System), which Pauline Ferrand Prevot used to win Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift on Saturday.
We first spotted Van Aert’s use of the KAPS during a recon ride, but (of course) the Cervélo S5 that we saw in the photos was not the bike he ended up racing.
The system is now seemingly well established and allows a rider to swap between three set pressures on the fly.
Drost told us that while deflating a tyre doesn’t cost a rider any watts, inflating back up increases system drag by around 7 watts.
The system is controlled by small shifters located on the bar. The left switch decreases pressure while the right switch increases pressure.
Another interesting feature of Van Aert’s tyres is that they are glued to the rims with Vittoria’s Mastik Pro tubular glue.
Many teams have trialled tubeless inserts in an effort to aid tyre retention in the event of a blowout, but this is among the first times we’ve heard of tyres being glued.
Well, that is if you ignore tubulars, of course.
Van Aert is no stranger to a 1x gearing setup, but again we found very interesting nuggets of tech.
This includes SRAM's fully-filled single chainring.
Drost says that WolfTooth has produced a slimmed down chain guide to provide a more aerodynamically efficient solution.
But while the Lidl Trek team used specially modified SRAM Red XPLR rear derailleurs with 12-speed road cassettes, Van Aert stuck with the regular Red AXS derailleur.
His gearing for Roubaix is huge, with a 10-30t cassette paired with an aero 54T chainring. His crank length is 172.5mm.
We've seen Visma Lease-a-Bike teammate Jonas Vingegaard trial very short crank arms, but that doesn't appear to be Van Aert's cup of tea.
The Soloist doesn’t feature a one-piece cockpit like the split stem design on the S5, so Van Aert opted for a two-piece setup from FSA.
While his stem is fairly long at 130mm, Van Aert keeps things reasonably traditional with a 400mm bar width and little-to-no tilt on his levers.
