Lauf launches the Úthald: A fresh take on road bike design from the gravel specialist

Icelandic brand Lauf has historically manufactured gravel bikes and leaf spring suspension forks for gravel bikes. Now, with the Úthald, it is looking at how it can make road bikes faster, in its own unique way.

Lauf says that typical bike design has been based on the concept of making a bike "feel fast or look last", whereas it is claiming that its approach with the new Úthald is to make sure the bike "is fast" for the rider.

Lauf has taken a more holistic approach to the design of the Úthald, working on the principles that it's going to be ridden by real humans who suffer from fatigue and discomfort that all factor into how "fast" a bike actually rides.

Stable handling

One of the ways Lauf has looked at making the Úthald ride faster is by making the geometry of the bike suitable for the high speeds of road cycling. This is something that we have seen BMC hone in on with their collaborations with the Red Bull Advanced Technologies team.

© Lauf

Lauf has relaxed the head angle to give the bike a more composed handling characteristic at speed

If a bike feels stable and predictable at high speeds it will allow a rider to push harder, brake less for corners and just feel more in control. A bike that has a more responsive feel will also feel twitchy when at higher speeds.

The Úthald has been a long time coming for the Icelandic brand: "Ever since the development of the True Grit gravel bike (back in 2016) we’ve been itching to use our learnings from that project to make a 'new-school-fast' road bike," the brand said.

The process of designing the True Grit provided Lauf with a scientific understanding of the physics at play on a drop-bar bike that has now been put into the geometry of the Úthald.

• Read more: BMC unveils all new Speedmachine in collaboration with Red Bull

A slacker head angle has been used to make the wheelbase a little longer than typical. This is often associated with relaxed fit endurance bikes, but the principle can be transferred to a racier fit bike.

Lauf says that "faster-fit road bikes are being differentiated from endurance bikes by less stable steering, in an effort to make them feel faster". Although they feel faster, Lauf has found that they aren’t any faster and can hold back the rider as they feel nervous.

© Lauf

Tucking the back wheel as close to the bottom bracket keeps the handling 'involved' for the rider

To keep the manoeuvrability in check, Lauf has paired the slacker front end with some seriously short chainstays in an attempt to keep the wheelbase in check and keep the ‘rider involvement’ in the bike.

Comfort

Comfort is becoming a more and more widely regarded attribution of a performance road bike, which makes sense as the more comfortable you are, the less you are going to suffer from fatigue-related performance decline.

It might not come as a surprise for those familiar with Lauf that this is the area that it is a specialist in, with its extensive knowledge in leaf spring suspension forks and gravel bike design.

"Sure, compliance has been done on road bikes, but not like we do on Úthald," the brand claims. "To be completely honest, a lot of bike frames that claim to be 'compliant' really aren’t."

© Lauf

The carbon lay-up in the frame and the shaping of the seat tube allows for material based compliance to act as suspension offering up to 15mm of movement

The Úthald frame certainly does have some figures that put it at the more compliant of road bike frames on the market. A 75kg rider will deflect the seatpost 4.5mm towards the rear axle just at sag, with the brand claiming that through an impact such as a pothole, the frame could offer around 15mm of compliance.

Wide tyres

Continuing the trend we are seeing from a lot of ‘endurance’ bike releases this year, from Canyon and Pinarello for example, Lauf has been generous with the tyre clearance that it's offering with the Úthald.

The bike will come fitted with 32mm rubber as standard with the ability to accept 35mm tyres should the rider want chunkier tyres to start heading into gravel bike territory.

Other design features

It really is a sign of the times when a new road bike is released and it has been designed exclusively around wireless shifting, but that is exactly how the Úthald comes.

"Realising that we would only ever build our Úthald with wireless shifting we decided to optimise it for SRAM AXS and wireless-cockpit Shimano Di2," Lauf said.

Saving some frame weight and manufacturing complexity in the process, a bike build for wireless shifting really shows how far bike tech has come.

© Lauf

Semi-internal hose routing is the best trade off in the eyes of Lauf

Lauf is also claiming that its brake hose routing is sensible and easy to live with when compared to some fully integrated offerings from other brands. Fully lined routing through the frame and fork make guiding hoses an easy affair with the brand claiming that the benefit to performance of a fully integrated configuration is negligible.

For a full run down of the technologies that Lauf has used in the new Úthald head over to their website.

Pricing and availability

Lauf will be offering three builds of the Úthald all coming with wireless gears and 32mm tyres as standard.

• Úthald Weekend Warrior wireless - SRAM Rival AXS: $3,490, shipping January 2024
• Úthald Race wireless - SRAM Force AXS: $4,690, shipping January 2024
• Úthald Ultimate - Build tbc: $7,500, available summer 2024

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