Obviously ‘Lille beauty’ is a convenient pun because that city in northern France near the Belgian border is where Van Rysel’s headquarters are, and it was also the location of the 2025 Tour de France Grand Départ. But in real life there’s nothing lil’ about the Van Rysel RCR-F – it is pumped up, muscular, hulking. Everything is oversized with the exception of the head tube, which is dramatically shortened in order to place the rider in an aggressive aero position – it's almost as deep as it is tall. The RCR was Van Rysel’s original WorldTour all-rounder (famously known as the WorldTour’s most affordable bike): the RCR-F is the RCR on steroids.
The Van Rysel RCR-F (‘F’ is for ‘fast’) launched in March 2025 but a prototype was first spotted almost a year earlier, ridden most notably by Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale’s Félix Gall in the 2024 Tour de France with a conspicuous marbled paint job. It seemed like a pretty clever marketing strategy to make people speculate for so long before launching it or even releasing any details, but Van Rysel engineer Louis Defaut told Rouleur that the real reason for delaying the launch was so that enough bikes could be produced and assembled to meet demand. “We did not want to have the same issue we had with the RCR – we were out of stock every single day. Every time there were bikes they sold in a few minutes. So we wanted to be more proactive by having more stock for the first deliveries; we wanted to be at full capacity when launching the RCR-F. That’s why we had the first production batch here in December but we launched the bike in March/April.”
I also asked Defaut whether Van Rysel had planned a dedicated aero bike from the beginning – two years ago many brands were consolidating their aero and climbing bikes into Tarmac SL8-style all-rounders. “Originally we planned to do only one bike, but we learnt a lot by developing the original RCR, so we knew we had room for improvement, to add something faster for the flat. Thanks to some simulations we knew that for sprinters we could earn one wheel, and that’s not a marginal gain. We knew that if we had these two bikes for the pro riders they would use 55% the aero bike and 45 the climbing bike depending on profile.” More team riders will use the aero bike? “You will see in the Tour that the domestiques will use only the F and the fastest helmet and clothing that helps them protect the leader. The leader for the final climb will use the [RCR] climbing bike, the climbing helmet, the most ventilated jersey.”
At its launch, Van Rysel claimed the RCR-F was 13 watts faster than the RCR and that the objective had been to design the fastest aero bike in the peloton.” So is it the fastest bike in the peloton? Where are the results of the competitor testing? “We don’t talk about others – for sure we test, we had the best competitors in the wind tunnel and in the end we were satisfied that it is the fastest bike in the peloton. We had the result from Tour magazine, independent aero testing with all brands, and we were the top aero bike. So I think we have a good weapon for the Decathlon-AG2R team.”
Next, I asked Defaut what the main thing is that makes the RCR-F that much faster. “With the RCR we really wanted a bike that could reach 6.8kg. Then, once we had that we had room for increasing the tube profiles: we know that increasing profiles for the bar, the head tube and down tube you earn watts but increase weight and the profiles are really different from the RCR’s. I would say the biggest improvement is the cockpit itself, then after that bigger and better tube profiles.”
Defaut says he and his team settled on a frame weight of 1,040g for a size medium. “We are happy with that – we could have gone lighter but it wouldn’t be so efficient in the wind. We had a version that was 40g lighter but it had the same stiffness as the RCR and we knew exactly what the riders wanted – 5-10% stiffer at the front and so it was a clear objective. So we would not launch a bike without listening to and hearing the riders.” The RCR-F in the AG2R team spec, says Defaut, weighs “7.5 or 7.6kg depending on chainring sizes with bottles, pedals and so on.”
Build and specification
I reviewed the entry-level RCR-F (£5,000 as of July 2025) built with Shimano 105 Di2, including an InPeak single-sided power meter and Swiss Side Hadron 625 wheels, which have a rim depth of 62mm and a weight of 1,840g. The weight of the size medium in this build is 8.5kg. I absolutely loved the look of the bike from the moment I first set eyes on it at Decathlon Surrey Quays. It’s mean, threatening, and uncompromising. It’s a real race bike with a saddle-bar drop that can fairly be described as vertiginous even with five 5mm spacers under the stem. The Van Rysel integrated cockpit – produced with Deda, just as the RCR’s cockpit was – has a curve in its flattened stem, like a carbon cobra that’s ready to strike. The bar measures an anarchically narrow 36cm between the inward-angled hoods (officially a 420mm bar with a 12° flare).
Everybody will make up their own mind about aesthetics, but for me the RCR-F is thrilling to look at yet easy to live with. We’re seeing some progressive, unconventional-looking aero bike designs at the moment, notably from Colnago and Factor: the Van Rysel by contrast keeps the classic shapes but just makes them faster.
Geometry
The riding position is completely different from that of the RCR, which I reviewed last year – at a guess more watt savings will come from this than from the deeper tubes or any other bit of aero engineering. As you’d expect, it feels 100 per cent designed for racers rather than everyday riders, and this apparently works for Van Rysel’s retail operations. “The customers know that the two bikes are different from each other,” says Defaut. “We don’t see a decrease in sales of the RCR; now we have bikes that can offer different solutions to different customers.”
Looking at the numbers for confirmation of this, the stack/reach ratio is aggressive compared with the RCR as well as other WorldTour race bikes. The RCR-F’s ratio is 1.36 in the size medium, while the RCR is 1.40. The Tarmac SL8 is a bit higher at 1.43, the Scott Foil is 1.40, and the Colnago Y1RS is 1.39. Yes, it’s surprisingly aggressive, but it's refreshing to see a race bike designed for racing without worrying about whether it can also be ridden 40 kilometres to the cafe in comfort.
Ride impressions
The RCR-F feels incredibly efficient, even at a low speed. It’s very stiff, ultra-responsive and super fast, and this was evident from the first pedal stroke when I cruised across London from Surrey Quays to the Rouleur office in Somerset House. I was overtaking lines of Lime bikes with hardly any input on the pedals. I couldn’t wait to get it home for some road bike time trialling. And when I did, as I knew it would be, it was rapid. In the one TT I rode on the RCR-F, it was just a handful of seconds behind the Factor Ostro VAM that I reviewed this time last year and on which I set a road bike PB for this course. The 7.3-mile sporting circuit has a long uphill section after the start, and looking at the Strava segments, I can see that this is where the Factor gained the most time. The Factor was on the UCI weight limit at 6.8kg, whereas the Van Rysel RCR-F in this build is 8.5kg. Unfortunately, I didn’t pair the Factor’s power meter at the time, so I can’t verify that it was the weight that made the difference, and the wind was coming from a different direction anyway. As ever, there are too many variables outside to make a meaningful comparison.
When I rode the RCR-F for non-competitive outings on flat or rolling roads, I still found I was cruising a couple of miles per hour faster than normal. I’m pretty certain my CdA was significantly lower on it than on any other bike I’ve ridden recently – I was going fast everywhere. I didn’t do any really long rides on it, but I didn’t find the aggressive position uncomfortable at all, and I would happily do four hours-plus. In fact, I prefer a weight distribution that balances more evenly between the saddle and the bars, and the ergonomic comfort of the cockpit is one of the highlights for me.
As for the ride quality, it’s a fact that aero bikes will never be as comfortable as all-rounders with shallower tubes. I would say the vast majority of the shock absorption came from the tyres – 28mm on the rear and 25mm on the front as specced by Van Rysel – but I found it firm and direct rather than harsh, and there’s still the innate vibration absorption from the carbon fibre. This doesn’t deter the pros from using it for the toughest one-day races: Defaut told me that all but one of the AG2R riders rode the RCR-F in the cobbled Classics. “Only Oscar Chamberlain was not riding it. Stefan Bissegger was seventh in Paris-Roubaix on it. In Roubaix you are very exposed to the wind so it’s a nonsense riding a climbing bike.”
Verdict
I applaud Van Rysel for being bold enough to make a full-on, no-holds-barred race bike like this. In some ways it’s not what you’d expect from a brand that is owned by the Decathlon sports chain, which obviously goes after the mass market, even though Van Rysel emphasises that their paymasters don’t have control over their bike design. I have huge respect for Van Rysel for producing this bike.
As for the RCR-F itself, whenever I wanted to do a road bike TT, a group thrash or just a solo ride where I want to put my head down and go fast on flat or rolling roads, this would be the bike. And since that type of riding is what I like to do 99% of the time, if I had to choose between the two of them I would go with the RCR-F over the RCR all-rounder.
I haven’t talked about the money much so far, and in this build I can’t think of a faster bike for a better price. I was also blown away by how good 105 Di2 is. If you’d told me it was Dura-Ace, I would have believed you.
Overall, for me the RCR-F is everything an aero race bike should be. Lille proved on day one of the Tour de France that it can produce exciting racing that tears up the script – it can also produce a bike that does exactly the same. Bravo.
All the details and specs at Decathlon's website.
