De Rosa Merak carbon road bike returns to pro racing with Cofidis Down Under

Written by Cory Benson Jan 20, 2020 1:21 p.m. ET

photo by Tornanti.cc for Fulcrum wheels

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The De Rosa Merak was one of the Italian bikemaker’s most successful road bikes in pro racing at the turn of the millennium. A twenty year old aluminum road bike is a far cry from what’s raced in the peloton today. But De Rosa have brought back the Merak name for their latest lightweight carbon, disc brake road bike, being raced this week at the Tour Down Under by Team Cofidis.

2020 De Rosa Merak lightweight carbon road bike

With a reveal back in the latter part of last year alongside the updated De Rosa graphics and the new aero Super King Pininfarina, the reborn De Rosa Merak road bike seeks to reclaim some all-rounder Italian road racing soul. At first glance it looks similar to many modern aero road bikes, but the De Rosa SK is more their aero road bike.

2020 De Rosa Merak road bike_lightweight made in Italy carbon road race bike_photo by Mathilde L Azou for Team Cofidis_ — photo by Mathilde L’Azou for Team Cofidis. lead photo by Tornanti.cc for Fulcrum wheels

Instead, with its overall outline of a horizontal toptube & dropped seatstays, plus generally optimized shapes suggest aerodynamics, the Merak’s tube profiles are all rounded off for smooth Italian looks and bit of comfort, rather than the lowest coefficient of drag. Now down to a claimed 800g (raw 54cm frame), the Merak is meant to be a lightweight all-rounder – just as suitable for climbing stages, multi-day races, or even gran fondos.

De Rosa Merak – Tech details

The Merak hits pretty much all the modern road features, built from a mix of hi-mod carbon (65% High-Modulus T800, 25% High-Modulus M46JB, 5% Ultra-High-Strength Woven Carbon, 5% High Impact 3K Woven Carbon).

Available only with flat mount disc brakes & 12mm thru-axles, the bike goes completely integrated with totally internal cables (mechanical or electronic shift) & brake lines using the 1.5″ FSA ACR integrated cockpit system. It has a drop-in wedge-style seatpost clamp in the toptube, securing a proprietary aero seatpost that gets a special grippy surface treatment to prevent slipping, plus a press fit BB86 bottom bracket.

There even is enough space for big modern road racing tires, at least 28mm (with extra clearance) in the back and more than 30mm through the fork.

The light carbon De Rosa Merak is made in Milan, in northern Italy, and is available in eight stock sizes.

Framesets retail for just under 4000€ in six simple color schemes, with complete premium bike builds starting around 7400€ with Campagnolo Chorus, 7700€ with Ultegra Di2, and climbing as high as your wallet will allow.

DeRosa.it

Cory Benson

4,163 articles

Cory Benson is the EU Tech Editor of Bikerumor.com.

Cory has been writing about mountain bikes, enduro, cyclocross, all-road, gravel bikes & bikepacking for over 25 years, even before the industry created some of these names. Prior to Bikerumor, Cory was a practicing Architect specializing in environmental sustainability, has designed bike shops & bike components, and worked as a bike shop mechanic.

Based in the Czech Republic for 15+ years, he is a technical mountain biker, adventurous gravel rider, and short & medium-haul bikepacker. Cory travels extensively across Europe riding bikes, meeting with key European product developers, industry experts & tastemakers for an in-depth review of what’s new, and what’s coming next.

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18 Comments

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Hexsense

4 years ago

Geometry chart lack so much details.
No head tube angle, fork rake and trail.
Why do they skip these important informations which indicate how the bike handle?

JBikes

4 years ago

Reply to Hexsense

Within a given genre (i.e. road “race” bike) handling won’t be defined 100% by geometry. There are too many bikes that are so close by the numbers, yet feel much different due to frame stiffness differences in different parts of the frame.

Hexsense

4 years ago

Reply to JBikes

Yeah, but at least physic of trail value is the biggest factor to tell how the bike handle cornering and it still hold regardless of material and stiffness unless a bike physically change it’s dimension by multiple millimeters during the ride (i.e. suspension system).

Veselin Mandaric

4 years ago

Reply to Hexsense

@Hexsense don’t you see, they are super precise, in 0.3 degree!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On 470mm that’s 2.46mm difference.
Talking in Engineering Tolerance that is +/- 1.23mm.
Someone really will feel that? From Size 46 to 48?
Half of that can be also deformation of carbon part taken from the mold, or the inconstancy of the seat post.

Hexsense

4 years ago

Reply to Veselin Mandaric

I don’t quite get what you say. But whatever, I’ll rephrase what I want.
I need trail value. Either give me trail value or give me head tube angle and fork offset to calculate it, either way is fine.

I’m not interested in any bike with trail value of more than 62mm or less than 55mm. I tested multiple bike and I’m certain in what I want. Trail value difference is very easy to spot, yet most people in size medium and up will never notice it because almost all racing road bike in size 52-58 are in this specified range anyway. But as a rider of size 48-50, this is far from the case. Many good brands try to maintain similar/same trail value as the size go down. While the worst offenders put their XS bike’s trail value at 72mm while their medium size’s trail value is normal 58mm. That’ll feel like a different bike, a review for size medium would be that the bike is snappy and agile while XS will feel sluggish because of the big trail value difference…

Anyway, I won’t buy this frame in blind. They managed to skip this important information, what else do they look over?

JBikes

4 years ago

Reply to Hexsense

Ahhh.
Your comments make more sense now. I do agree that “race bike category handling” is often only applied on sizes above 52cm.

Given you are on a 48-50, the desire to have the info is valid to weed out bikes in which little care was given to small sizes (which is a shame). I’m personally hoping Canyon’s push to resurrect small wheels in 650b works. 650c was there and works great, but made it was culturally too soon despite the real benefits.

Hexsense

4 years ago

Reply to Veselin Mandaric

BTW: are you confusing headtube angle with seattube angle? I don’t care STA, I only wanted HTA and fork offset to calculate trail value.

CyclingFoodieDude

3 years ago

Reply to Veselin Mandaric

I have ridden De Rosa for 10yrs now. The 2020 SKP is fantastic but heavy. The 2020 Metal competes with the 2017 Protos as the most uncomfortable bike ever made. De Rosa has a strange geometry and run 1 or 2 sizes smaller than you’d think. I love my 2020 SKP and Protos though. Forza Juve!

Craig

4 years ago

De Rosa back to their best. A stunning bike.

Velo Kitty

4 years ago

What stem are the Cofidis bikes using? It looks different.
The front center of the 56 is long enough for me. Hallelujah.
On the negative side, I wish they had gone with BB386EVO instead of BB86. Also I don’t think FSA’s ACR is available in a stem-only version.

Jackalope

4 years ago

Reply to Velo Kitty

FSR ACR is available as stem only.

Velo Kitty

4 years ago

Reply to Jackalope

You appear to be correct: The FSA NS ACR Stem in lengths from 70 mm to 130 mm. But I don’t see it for sale anywhere. Also there is no manual for it on the FSA website. (The FSA website pretty much sucks.)

Craig

4 years ago

Reply to Velo Kitty

To order certain ACR products you need to do a special order. And the tech info can be requested from an FSA distributor.

Velo Kitty

4 years ago

Reply to Craig

I heard back from FSA, and they don’t have a manual for the ACR stem.

Craig

4 years ago

Reply to Velo Kitty

Sorry I meant they have a tech document with dimensions for the ACR headset. Correct, not the stem. But they do for the headset.

Heffe

4 years ago

The lack of important information makes the geometry chart laughable. Is the head tube angle ‘proprietary’? I would guess that there are at least some who, despite the brand mystique, would still need to see that information to purchase an expensive bike.

Tomi

4 years ago

Reply to Heffe

I’d just test the damn bike.

JBikes

4 years ago

Reply to Tomi

This.
I get the sense people would test the bike, love it, then look at the HTA and say “oh, that isn’t right”….Or the inverse, force yourself to believe a bike works regardless of what your body/brain tells you.

Humans variance in proportion, total weight, fit desires, power output and bike handling style/preference combined with subtle differences in frame geometry and frame design to define a single bikes handling prowess and ride quality by numbers alone.