The violence associated with Paris-Roubaix’s cobbles puts riders on unmodified road bikes at a distinct disadvantage. With that, Felt have modified their F1 for the Argos-Shimano team to fit the unique needs of the brutal race.
It's called the F-Series Paris-Roubaix and incorporates a host of race specific features. The new bike is heavily based on the F1 bike, a model that Argos-Shimano has already logged a half dozen wins on this year, including last Wednesday’s Scheldeprijs, which Marcel Kittel took on his standard F1 bike.
Felt have made changes to the bike and its geometry through fork and rear dropout modifications. The F-Series Paris-Roubaix sports slacker head and seat tube angles by 1°. In addition, the chassis is 10mm longer in the front center and 13mm longer when measuring rear center. “The frame modifications were all achieved by slightly altering dropout locations,” Doug Martin, Felt’s sports marketing director told BikeRadar. “Other than that, these are identical to the team's (and a production) current F-series, including lay-up. No new molds required. An aftermarket version of this is unlikely only because it is so close to the current F-Series that in anything other than extreme conditions, the differences would be so minor. We could do it, and we may, but today it is not 100 percent confirmed.”
Felt also say the fork is 12mm longer, which would modify the geometry and allow for increased tire clearance, and they’ve increased the bottom bracket drop by 3mm to match the BB height of the F1 model; note that all of these measurements are made based on the team’s 28mm Vittoria Pavé tire dimension.
To set the bikes apart, Felt have painted them bright floro’ green. The team’s equipment remains fairly standard save for longer reach Shimano BR-R650 brakes, to accommodate for the longer fork/dropout distances and the larger 28mm tires.
