Campagnolo have certainly had quite a good day today releasing 3 new products to the cycling world. They have announced a new groupset to rival Shimano Ultegra, an update to its Shamal wheelset and have finally announced prototypes for their entry into the disc brake world. I won’t go into too much detail as that is all online but here I’m just going to explain the most important aspects to these systems and offer my views on them.

New Groupset

Campagnolo have announced a new groupset that sits above Veloce and Athena but below Chorus, Record and Super-Record. It is called ‘Potenza’ and as you would expect is 11-speed. It’s mostly made of aluminium and now has the option to be used with an 11-32 cassette, something which Shimano and SRAM have offered for a while. The complete weight of the entire groupset is 2,303g which is pretty competitive. However as a groupset that is designed to rival Shimano Ultegra or SRAM Force, it costs £200 more. In terms of performance, I doubt this being able to beat its competitors in this respect and both groupsets perform fantastically. I like how Campagnolo are sticking with the four-arm spider used in Chorus, Record and Super-Record to give it more exclusivity into the upper regions of their groupsets and of course, looks are very aesthetically pleasing. However, if I were to build a bike up I would definitely opt for Chorus over Potenza simply because you get a lot more (namely carbon exotica!) and its performance is similar to Shimano Dura-Ace.

New Wheels

First developed more than 20 years, Campagnolo Shamal’s have been a popular wheelset and the upgrade to this latest iteration is the increase in rim width to 17mm to better accommodate 25c tyres to increase comfort when riding, similar to what Mavic have done with their wheels recently.

Disc Brakes

Campagnolo have finally unveiled prototypes for their disc brakes which they are going to be trialling. Unfortunately for all you Campag lovers, you won’t be able to get your hands on this just yet but it’s reassuring to know that it will be released in the not-too distant future. Of course, it’s hydraulic (would you ever expect Campagnolo to release a mechanical disc brake?!) and Campagnolo have been able to preserve the ergonomics of their existing shift levers although they are slightly taller like Shimano and SRAM to house the hydraulic fluid reservoir. Whilst I am happy that Campagnolo have finally entered the disc brake market, I was expecting the shift levers to look a little nicer aesthetically. Although it’s only a prototype at the moment, it looks a little bit like a MicroShift shifter (pictured below) and that’s not a compliment!