For the French company’s all new carbon XC race hardtail, Lapierre has combined vertical compliance tech developed for the road with XC race geometry & tubing from their full-suspension race platform. The result is the new Prorace SAT – a race mountain bike that promises the acceleration & efficient climbing of a light carbon hardtail, with the rear end comfort of a softail. Beyond just making sure that riders don’t get beat up over the course of a cross-country race, the controlled flex of the SAT rear end claims to increase grip and control making for a faster bike both up and down the mountain…
The new Prorace hardtail combines the flexible SAT elastomer damper tech introduced first and then updated again this year on their endurance road Pulsium in a proper off-road capable bike based on Lapierre’s short-travel XR full-suspension bike.
The key element of the new bike is of course the Shock Absorption Technology design with a small elastomer located between the end of the seatstays and the kinked toptube, but in fact most of the actual SAT action is based in the frame’s tube shaping and the carbon layup. They’ve tuned those layups to be totally unique for each frame size, based around typical rider size:weights.
The SAT flex works without the actual elastomer there (so there’s no need for more than one hardness dependant on rider weight) with the rubber element serving the roles of damping, aesthetics, and to provide a final bottom-out protection to prevent the extended seatstays from contacting the toptube under the most extreme rear wheel input.
Take that elastomer away and you can see that it is the drastically flattened seattube just above the bottom bracket and the offset alignment of the seatstays & toptube at the seat cluster that allow rear axle inputs (or saddle inputs) to flex the seattube+seatpost to allow the wheels to stay planted to the ground and the rider to be unaffected. Lapierre didn’t talk about real rear wheel travel numbers for the soft hardtail, but said there is about 5-6mm of movement at the elastomer when riding, with a good bit more of that at the saddle.
Lapierre first wanted to build a faster, lighter XC hardtail so the bike gets a stiff backbone – with a rigid downtube, bottom bracket & chainstays that go a long way to making for quick handling & efficient power transfer. But just like they saw on the Pulsium on the rough roads of the Northern Spring Classics, by pairing the stiff ‘Intellizone Module’ backbone with the flexible SAT seattube & stays, the bike actually stays more connected to the ground making it climb faster as well.
Lapierre has optimized the Prorace for 1x (and especially) Eagle drivetrains and has developed a high mount chain guide for the bike as well. The 30g reinforced plastic guide also incorporates a simple little ‘Integrated Spare Link’ (ISL) mount on its back side that lets riders carries a spare master link to fix a broken chain on the trail without having to tape it onto the bike like some racers do.
The bike is still compatible with double chainring setups (although the complete builds are all SRAM 1x) with both sideswing & Di2 routing. The Prorace also includes Lapierre’s trapdoor to put your Di2 battery at the press fit bottom bracket for lower weight distribution. As a race bike, the new hardtail only gets a single bottle cage mount on the downtube. Lapierre looked to add a second one to the seattube but it prevented them from building in the compliance they were aiming for with the flexing seattube, while still passing the targeted durability testing.
Also, even though the bike uses a small 27.2mm seatpost for enhanced comfort, Lapierre has included internal routing for a dropper seatpost. Even though it won’t be ready yet when the bikes are available, Lapierre is developing their own short 3” dropper post to work with the bike. It will likely be available at the start of the year as an after market part direct from their online shop.
Geometry for the new Prorace is a direct analogue to the longer, more slack (but still) XC race geometry that Lapierre developed for their XR cross country bike last year. The trail riding capabilities of the XC bikes certainly isn’t hurt by the fact that multiple DH World Champion Nicolas Vouilloz plays a role in the development & testing of all of Lapierre’s mountain bikes, no matter what platform.
The bike comes in four sizes, and is 29er only with its Boost 148 rear end and 428mm chainstays across the board. Lapierre claims they were able to get a raw frame without paint under 1kg, with a finished medium frame at 1070g (and 20-30g difference from size to size.)
The Prorace SAT will come in two different carbon frame specs and three complete builds. A Prorace SAT 929 will get the high mod Ultimate Carbon frame, plus a SID World Cup 100mm fork, complete XX1 Eagle Gold groupset, a new set of tubeless ready Lapierre carbon wheels & a Maxxis Ardent/Ikon tire combo for a claimed 9.2kg weight.
The next Prorace SAT 729 shares the same top Ultimate Carbon frame but climbs to about 10kg with a SID RL fork, X01 Eagle group & aluminum Mavic Crossmax Elite wheels.
A Prorace SAT 629 will use a lesser standard grade Carbon frame that is said to add just 30g of extra weight, but is able to significantly bring the price down. The complete bike gets spec’d with a Reba RL fork (which shares the SID casting, but with a cheaper Motion Control damper), a 1×11 NX drivetrain, and a Mavic/Formula wheelset.
Final pricing hasn’t yet been finalized, but the middle level 729 should retail for around 3600€, when it shows up in Lapierre shops at the end of July. The entry 629 should sell for around 2700€ with availability in the autumn, and no price range yet for the 929 which is expected to hit shops before Christmas.
