Spanish superlight carbon cockpit maker Darimo is back with another new crazy light product. This time it’s the Ellipse Gravel carbon handlebar – designed to scale up a wider, compact drop bar for riders looking for extra control on their ultralight, mixed-surface bikes.
Darimo Ellipse Gravel ultralight carbon handlebar
While most gravel-specific bars opt for plenty of flare & backsweep, Darimo sticks with a conventional road shape for the Ellipse Gravel. The thinking goes that when you move the hoods+drops out to 500mm wide, you don’t actually need a lot of extra flare to get a wide comfortable position. And by extending the tops out by around 10cm/4″ vs. a conventional bar, you get much more room to find a comfortable position for your hands sliding side-to-side on the tops and into the bend, no matter what surface you are riding.
To make it all work, Darimo has reinforced their lightweight, handmade bi-directional & UD carbon construction for the 50cm wide, 31.8mm clamp bar. Yet its total weight still comes in at just 185g claimed (which Darimo almost always seems to meet or over-perform from our experience.)
The bar uses the same compact shape as their regular road bar, with 77mm reach & 128mm of drop. It uses mostly round shaping, but with a subtle flattening of the tops for comfort, and external cable routing grooves in the underside of the bar. Internal routing for Di2 is also available as special order, adding a few extra grams as Darimo molds & reinforces the holes to ensure performance & integrity.
Darimo sells the made-in-Spain Ellipse starting at 400€, with a recommended max rider weight of 90kg, but more reinforced bars are also possible. More than just a wide road bar, Darimo calls the ultralight Ellipse Gravel “comfortable and indestructible”.