New Cannondale SuperSix Evo breaks cover at the Tour Down Under

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Well, that’s exactly the approach Cannondale seems to have taken in what appears to be the fifth-generation SuperSix Evo Lab71 currently being raced by EF Education-Oatly at the Tour Down Under. The new bike has already notched up its first victory of the season, following Noemi Ruegg’s sprint finish to win stage three and secure the overall title for a second time.

While Cannondale has been tight-lipped in sharing any details around the bike, a new SuperSix Evo wouldn’t come as a shock based on the 3-4 year model lifecycle most brands employ, and the fact that at the 2023 product launch, Cannondale’s senior design engineer, Dr Nathan Barry told me the design team was already making plans to start work on the fifth-generation SuperSix Evo.

From the pictures, the new model looks very much like the fourth-generation SuperSix Evo launched in 2023, with subtle nuances in the tube profiling, particularly around the headtube and the fork, the former of which looks slightly deeper and shorter than before. This is nothing particularly groundbreaking and falls within the current push towards enhanced aerodynamics.

It’s hard to tell from the pictures if there are any other frame tweaks; if so, the alterations are very small. The seat tube, however, looks a lot like what we’ve seen on the new SuperX and Synapse models, tapering towards the bottom bracket junction, which could suggest improved tyre clearance. For contrast, the fourth-generation SuperSix Evo has space at the rear to clear 30mm tyres. A closer examination of the dropout assembly reveals a UDH dropout – ensuring the new model plays nicely with most modern groupsets and futureproofs the setup, too.

What I have noticed is what appears to be a new cockpit configuration, eschewing the Vision and MomoDesign SystemBar R-One bar configurations of the fourth-generation Lab71 team bikes, but I can’t tell if it’s sponsor-specific or from the manufacturer.