Not sure I agree with all of this. The sponsors are all about business. Maximizing profit. Carbon bikes seem the way to go in this day and age. They are making a lot of technological advancements, but they are still, relatively, a lot cheaper to produce for the masses. You’d be surprised what these pros ride/buy with their own choices/cash.
All these races are about marketing products. They were all riding alloy before carbon took off, and now that it’s a fraction of the cost to mass produce, it only makes sense to ride that wave.
Just my $0.02
Quote:
Originally Posted by mtechnica
If any other material had an advantage over carbon fiber, the sponsors would be giving those frames to pros to ride then selling and marketing the crap out of them. There is a reason 99.9% of racing bikes both amateur and professional are carbon and it's not because they are cheapest to manufacture. If you suggested to a professional cyclist that they should ride a steel frame in an important race they would laugh you out the door. I'm not trying to be rude it's just the way I see it and I'm pretty much certain I'm right. The only people I know that don't have carbon racing bikes, have aluminum ones because decent carbon ones are too expensive, so that kind of shoots a hole in your cost argument as well. Obviously a caad costs less to manufacture than an evo, otherwise they wouldn't even make the caad at all. That's not to say every carbon frame is better than any metal frame, but in my experience / observation really good carbon frames are better than the best metal frames.
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