Aero is as Aero Does

Foil Ride Review by Road Bike Action

We first saw early prototypes of the Scott Foil at the 2010 Tour de France when it showed up underneath mark Cavendish and the HTC-Columbia squad. In the year since, the bike has been polished and refined to the 2011 production version tested here.

The majority of the time we spent on the Foil Team Issue was on the exact same routes the pros were racing during the Amgen Tour of California. We logged nearly 600 miles over the course of a week on terrain ranging from the snow roads of Tahoe to the technical switchback descent of Mount Hamilton, over the leg-busting ascent up Sierra Grade and all the rough California farm roads in between.

Out of the gate, the Foil is responsive under acceleration; bottom bracket stiffness and power transfer are impressive. Flying down a switchback descent on the Foil makes you want to push harder and harder to see what the limiter is, you or the bike—turns out it’s us. From the head tube all the way to the rear dropouts, the frame felt connected, without any disjointed feeling when being pressed through a turn.

    On the flats where we expected the Foil to be at its best, we were extra conscious of our own aerodynamics. Since most of your power goes to pushing your body through the wind, we tried to minimize our frontal area by getting low in a time-trial position. Between the decrease in the frame’s drag over a round-tube bike and our position on it, the difference in speed versus effort is noticeable.

The Foil Team Issue is a jack-of-all-trades bike. It’s light enough to be ridden in the mountains, stiff enough to be a criterium bike and aero enough to be a dual-purpose road/time-trial bike.