While they won’t hit stores until early 2024, Felt Bicycles sent over a few sneak peeks of their revised racing and endurance road bikes.
The FR is their all-arounder race bike, made for climbing, descending, and hammering at the highest level – think stage racer versus crits. The VR is the everyday bike for most riders, blending performance with long-distance comfort. For 2024, both bikes get better at their respective games when they launch in February.
2024 Felt FR
The Felt FR maintains its racy character but introduces more aerodynamic efforts to help you save a few watts. The mostly-internal routing starts with the handlebar with cables popping out near the stem, where they run into a channel underneath it, then through the headset and into the frame.
This lets Felt keep the bar and stem separate to make it easier to install and service…and swap bar and stem sizes to customize the fit and swap in any personal favorites…for the bar, at least. Any aftermarket stem will have to work with the routing through the headset.
Overall, the bike has sharper, straighter lines and corners than before.
Later in 2024, they have an ultralight, sub-700g version coming, too. While they won’t say anything more than that it uses a “special layup”, Felt was one of the first brands to fully embrace TeXtreme fibers and create some very light yet strong frames with it, so it’ll be interesting to see what they have up their tight, aero jersey sleeves.
2024 Felt VR
I’ve ridden the VR over the years, and it’s an excellent bike. For 2024, it follows trends by increasing tire clearance to 700×38, allowing it to head into “fast gravel” territory without giving up anything that’s made it a great all-road endurance bike.
They add a new vibration-damping system at the seatpost collar to smooth rough roads. Based on the slim seatpost shown with a thicker than necessary seat tube, we’re guessing there’s an elastomer sleeve in there (or similar).
Up front, it gets the same aero two-piece bar & stem combo as the FR, too. It looks like the top tube bag mounts go away, which is a bummer, but maybe these are pre-production models without all of the bells and whistles shown.
The seatstays meet the seat tube lower than before, which should help in overall compliance, working well with the seatpost systems and larger tires to make it a fast and comfortable bike.
