Cannondale SuperSix Evo 4 First Ride

Launch season is still in full swing, which means I’m still in the swing of jetting off from rainy Bristol to sunny road bikes parts of Spain to ride unreleased bikes. This time I spent the week in Girona, drinking extremely good espresso, riding the new Cannondale SuperSix Evo Hi-Mod 1, and generally feeling rather fancy.

Our news piece covering the launch goes into all the ins and outs of the bike, so we’ll skim over those bits that aren’t so important and instead focus on how this particular model shaped up. I spent a smidge shy of 90km atop the Hi-Mod 1 model in the hills around Girona, including a very enjoyable ascent of the Els Àngels climb, which always makes me imagine it was named by Danny Dyer. For our international audience, imagine any character from the Guy Ritchey classic Snatch.

As always, this is a first look rather than a final conclusion. Further testing is always needed over a variety of terrain to solidify things, but you can still get a decent idea on a moderate day out in the sun.

Pros
+Genuinely lovely paint
+Excellent, balanced handling characteristics
+Very good tyres as standard
Cons
-SRAM Red beginning to feel dated
-Wheels great on the flat, but take a bit to spin up

Performance
If something is genuinely noteworthy, for good reasons, it’s worth starting with it. This is a premium bike, and for once it comes with really decent tyres. The 25mm continental GP5000s are good enough for Tom Pidcock when he’s descending like a lunatic, they’re one of the best road bike tyres out there, and it’s excellent to have a new bike not held back by lower-tier rubber just to meet a price point.

Because I am a certified VLB (Very Lucky Boy) I’ve been treated to first rides of the new Colnago V4Rs, the new Canyon Ultimate, and the new Pinarello F lately. In handling terms the new Supersix feels most similar to the Pinarello F. It’s not as twitchy and responsive as the Canyon, which is the most nimble bike I’ve tested thus far (and correspondingly unstable feeling on certain terrain), while it’s certainly more lively than the Colnago. What I liked about the Pinarello, and what I like about the SuperSix too, is that it’s mellow when you don’t give it beans. When you’re cruising along in the bunch it feels stable and secure, while the Canyon felt twitchy even then, and the Colnago made me want to doze off.

Mellow, and comfortable too. The roads around Girona aren’t the glassy smooth tarmac of Calpe. There are broken bits that, while not a patch on the UK, certainly test out the compliance of the package. Even on 25mm rubber, the SuperSix didn’t make all of my fillings fall out. For clarity, because my mother will undoubtedly read this and is a retired dentist, I don’t actually have any fillings.

The stack height of the test bike was a little high for my liking, but nothing taking a few spacers out wouldn’t fix. Even so, on the flat, it didn’t nip along with quite the vigour of the Canyon, which I put down to the wheels. The package is undoubtedly aero, and also given the MOMO monocoquepit was absent for the test may have slightly hampered things, but the 50mm deep Hollowgram wheels took a bit more effort to spin up than the DTSwiss package of the German option. While rolling they conversely felt like they had more significant momentum, but this is also in part down to the slightly less choppy handling I suspect. Feeling aerodynamic differences is next to impossible, short of back-to-back tests, and as ever at this level, it’s splitting hairs; it’s not going to hold you back on the flat that’s for sure, and Magnus Cort says it feels faster (though he is sponsored, so take that as you will).