The new Specialized Crux has officially launched – and it has been given a major overhaul.
As teased by its leak at the Gralloch earlier this month, the classical lines and round tubes of the previous version are gone, replaced by a suite of truncated aerofoil tubes inspired by Specialized’s road racing bikes, such as the Tarmac SL8 and SL7.
Notably, though, the fifth-generation Crux hasn’t gone all in on aerodynamics as many of the new gravel race bikes we spotted at this year's Traka have.
Instead, Specialized has taken a balanced approach to aero and weight – driven, it says, by telemetry data from elite races and complex race simulations.
Bold as ever, Specialized says the new Crux 5 is “the fastest gravel race bike ever made”, and that it has the data to prove it.
If you want to know how it rides, click through to read my first-ride review of the new Specialized Crux 5 S-Level. Otherwise, keep reading for all the details about how the bike was designed and what models are available.
Aero isn’t everything
The most visually obvious change to the new Crux compared to the previous bike is that it's had an aero makeover.
To put a number on the potential performance gains this delivers, Specialized says the new Crux is “15.2 watts” more aerodynamic at 45kph, when tested in its ‘Win Tunnel’ with a full-body mannequin with moving legs.
It is notable, though, that the new Crux isn’t a gravel Venge.
Unlike some of the hyper-aero gravel bikes we saw leaked or launched at the Traka earlier this month, such as Ridley’s RSS prototype and the prototype Factor, the new Crux is a proper all-rounder race bike, and Specialized was very clear that aero isn’t everything here.
With that in mind, the new S-Works Crux has a claimed frame weight of only 789g, with stock builds including the new Roval Terra Aero CLX wheels and integrated cockpit (which were both designed in tandem with the new Crux) starting from only 7.2kg.
That’s up 64g versus the S-Works Crux 4 frame, but obviously given the move away from round tubes to an aero-optimised design, that is still impressively light.
At the launch event for the bike, Specialized even showed off a Crux 5 built with Roval Terra CLX III wheels, slightly narrower tyres and other lightweight components that weighed just over 6.6kg (without pedals or bottle cages, of course).
Weight aside, and perhaps more importantly, the new Crux has also had a significant bump in tyre clearance, up to 55mm with room to spare for mud, and some small tweaks to its geometry.
Reach figures have, for example, got slightly longer on larger sizes (+3mm on a size 56) to work better with shorter stems, and to stop some pro riders resorting to excessively long stems to get the reach they want.
The head tube angle has also been slackened by half a degree, which sees it drop from 72 to 71.5 degrees on a size 56. Specialized says this change will help increase “confidence at speed”, due to the fact it should slow down the handling slightly, and it likely also helps mitigate toe overlap with the new larger tyres the bike is designed for.
Continuing that theme, the bottom bracket height has been dropped by 6mm to account for the larger tyres, and seat tube angles have been steepened by half a degree across the size range, to put the rider in a more forward position over the BB, and to help with rear tyre clearance.
It’s impressive to note Specialized hasn’t resorted to tricks such as dropped, kinked or super-long chainstays in order to squeeze in that 55mm of tyre clearance at the rear.
Despite the bump in clearance, the chainstays are in fact the same length as before, at 425mm on all sizes.
According to Douglas Russell, a senior design engineer at Specialized, this area of the new Crux was “extremely difficult” to design, and he “spent a lot of hours just on that small section of the frame”.
Part of the solution was making the new Crux 1x-only, because the inner chainring on a 2x setup would otherwise have caused clearance issues. Fitting big 1x chainrings won’t be an issue, though, because the new Crux can clear up to a 52-tooth.
Time to finish
An intriguing question to answer, then, is why did Specialized opt to make a lightweight-aero all-rounder, when so many other brands seem to believe that simply making the most aerodynamic gravel bike possible is the way they’ll win races (and/or sell bikes) in the next few years?
The answer has to do with Specialized’s race-simulation tools and telemetry data that it has been gathering from races such as Unbound over the last few years.
Specialized’s conclusion is that because gravel racing is slower than road racing, and the rolling resistance is so much higher, there’s a different tipping point for how many aero features, and therefore how much weight, you can add to a gravel bike before the benefits don’t make it faster in the real world.
The term Specialized has coined for this is 'time to finish’, which means exactly what it says – it simulates the race, the rider, the conditions, the equipment and so on, and designs the bike to give the fastest theoretical finishing time.
According to this modelling, if Sofía Gómez Villafañe had raced the new Crux, instead of the old one, at last year’s Unbound, she’d have finished 9 minutes and 58 seconds faster, potentially moving her up from third to second place.
Likewise, Mads Würtz Schmidt would have saved 7 minutes and 45 seconds on the new Crux according to the same modelling, which could have even netted him the win.
Now, of course, that’s only if everything else stayed the same, and every other racer was on their previous bike, employing the same tactics, and so on.
It illustrates why Specialized has gone down this route with its design, though, because it's basing its design choices on what should – according to its models – help riders get to the finish line of real races as fast as possible, as opposed to simply chasing the lowest drag figures in a wind tunnel, or the lightest possible weight on the scales.
In terms of how the aerodynamic savings break down, it’s interesting to note that Specialized says the new frame is responsible for around 50 per cent of the drag savings, but the new Terra Aero wheels and Terra integrated cockpit account for the other 30 and 20 per cent, respectively.
If you’ve got an old Crux, then, you could theoretically get half of the aero gains on offer here simply by upgrading your wheels and cockpit.
Specialized Crux 5 range, specifications and pricing
There are four builds in the new Specialized Crux 5 line-up, from the range-topping, S-Works Crux 5 AXS with SRAM Red XPLR AXS (£11,999 / $14,000 / €13,999) down to the Crux 5 Comp with Rival XPLR AXS (£3,999 / $5,800 / €5,799).
There are also frameset options for both the S-Works tier, Fact 12R carbon frameset (£5,249 / $5,800 / €5,799) and the 10R carbon version, although the latter is only available in the US and Australia ($2,500 / AU$5,000).
Notably, a new ‘S-Level’ build replaces what would have formerly been the second-tier ‘Pro’ build.
The Crux 5 S-Level takes the second-tier Fact 10R frameset and pairs it with a flagship SRAM Red XPLR AXS groupset, the new Terra cockpit and Terra Aero CL wheels (which use the same rims as the CLX wheels, but swap the carbon spokes for steel ones and see DT Swiss 350 hubs in place of 180s).
The final build is the ‘mid-range’ Crux 5 Expert AXS (£5,999 / $7,000 / €6,399), with a SRAM Force XPLR AXS groupset, a two-piece aluminium cockpit and Roval Terra CL III carbon wheels.
