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Narrow Vs Flared Handlebars
Cycling Weekly
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31/05/2025
Flared handlebars. They’ve been widely adopted in the gravel riding world, with the wider stance providing greater control on technical terrain—as well as the secondary benefit of getting your hands out the way of your bar bag.
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Transcript
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00:00
Do you need flared handlebars on your road bike? They've been widely adopted in the gravel market
00:06
because they give you greater control over technical terrain and you can squish a bag
00:10
in between the drops that bit easier. But are we missing a trick not riding them on a road bike?
00:16
Today I'm going to tell you all about it. Before we get into it though we should really talk about
00:22
what effect handlebars have on our aerodynamic efficiency as riders. You see I'm not talking
00:27
about aero bars here ones which have prioritized being easy to go through the air with their thick
00:33
flat tops. No I'm talking about round flared bars and surprisingly they don't actually have that
00:39
bigger impact on our CDA. That's our coefficient of aerodynamic drag. For a rider in a fairly
00:45
average position on a bike, so not too aggressive, not too relaxed, 85% of aerodynamic drag is going
00:52
to come from that rider. There's only 15% coming from the bike itself. So it goes without saying
00:58
that really the best way to optimize any aerodynamic position on the bike is to optimize the rider's
01:04
position and the handlebar is the first port of call when you want to do that. It's pretty well
01:10
adopted now that the aero hoods position is the most aerodynamic for riding on the road. Now this
01:15
position is the one where you sit holding onto the hoods here like in this position with your arm
01:22
at 90 degrees to where you're holding on to the bars and this lowers your frontal section that's
01:27
being hit by the wind and allows your forearm to come in line behind your wrist. You'll see racers
01:32
doing this more now at races rather than sitting straight on the drops because it gives them that
01:37
lower frontal area to be impacted by the oncoming wind. Now a narrower handlebar can reduce your CDA
01:46
even further and where once 42cm bars were common you now see 38cm bars and 36cm bars in the pro peloton
01:55
as those racers try and reduce their frontal area and their CDA that bit more. But of course it would
02:01
be amiss to not mention that bar widths obviously plays a massive part in how a bike handles. The narrower
02:07
your handlebar the twitchier the bike is going to feel and that's because a handlebar is simply a lever
02:12
through which you apply pressure to turn the bike and if you apply pressure through a narrower space
02:17
it's going to happen that bit quicker. Now it is possible to adapt to twitchy steering but not all
02:23
riders are going to want to do that. It's very very common that riders want to ride a nice stable bike
02:28
and only the pros are going to want the fastest handling possible. So why am I talking about all of
02:33
this? Well that's exactly where flared handlebars come in. The principle is you get the narrower top
02:38
section so you can sit on the hoods in a nice aerodynamic position but then the flare out at
02:43
the drops puts you in that nice controlling position for descending. Now it's worth mentioning that a
02:50
standard flared gravel bar isn't going to cut the mustard here because they're simply too wide to put
02:56
you in an aerodynamic position. You don't really get gravel handlebars narrower than a 44 or a 42 whereas
03:04
on the road you're really looking for a 40 or a 38 to make the most of that aerodynamic position.
03:11
Now for demonstration purposes I've equipped this bike with a salsa cowbell bars which are 38 centimeters
03:16
wide hood to hood but then have 12 degrees of flare and hopefully you can see from the camera angle you
03:22
can see that coming out at the back. Now one thing to consider with flared bars is the reach and drop and
03:29
how that might affect your position because some riders do like to ride with handlebars which have
03:34
a bigger drop to the drops than these shallow ones do here so bear that in mind. Now the downside is it's
03:41
not exactly like the road market is teeming with flared handlebar options available for people to buy.
03:47
There are a few notable options including Envy's SES aero handlebar that measures 35 centimeters at the hood
03:56
which is seriously narrow but flares out to 40 centimeters down on the drops giving the rider
04:03
the best of both worlds. A more avant-garde option would be the Spiko ABB which stands for Aero
04:10
Breakaway Bar and this takes the principle of flared bars to its logical conclusion which is it builds in
04:17
an armrest to make sitting in that aero hood's position that bit easier. And the hoods are just 32
04:23
centimeters wide flaring out to 37 centimeters in the drops. Now you may have seen these bars used
04:30
in the pro peloton because they were designed in collaboration with and then used by Jan Willem
04:35
van Schieb and astonishingly UCI actually haven't banned them yet they're still UCI legal but at 1500
04:42
euros we wouldn't expect take up to happen that quickly. Of course there are those that argue that
04:49
flared bars on the road are not the way to go and Zip are one of these they say that flared bars can mess
04:56
with the brake lever alignment which is supposed to be in a vertical plane and you can see here that
05:01
the brake lever is not on that plane it does flare out in the same way that the drops do. They also say
05:08
that having your hands in that position on the hoods is more likely to cause injury and it's not going to
05:14
be for all riders who might try and force themselves to ride in that position and suffer from discomfort.
05:21
That's not to say that Zip haven't explored down this route at all and they have but they called it
05:26
outsweep rather than flare and this is a bit different because the hoods and the brake levers
05:31
sit in a vertical alignment and instead the drops at the end sweep outwards to give a rider a bit more
05:38
of a controlling position and Zip has done lots of testing around this and they've landed on 5 degrees
05:44
of flare and 11 degrees of outsweep being the optimum orientation of relationship between the drop and the
05:51
hood before the ergonomics of the handlebars start getting messed up. So are flared handlebars worth it
05:59
for your road bike? Well if you're trying to optimize your aerodynamic position without really affecting
06:05
the handling of your bike they could be worthy of your consideration however bear in mind there aren't
06:10
that many options to buy right now so you could be short suited in the exact spec you're looking for
06:16
however we would expect this trend to increase as the lines have blurred between the road cycling world
06:22
and the all-road gravel world as we've seen pretty much in every other part of the bike so really it's a
06:29
watch this space type of debate so there you go a little introduction to the world of flared handlebars
06:37
on the road if you have enjoyed this video do give us a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe to the
06:42
cycling weekly channel and if you have any of the questions leave them in the comment section below
06:47
now i'll be back soon with some more great tech content and i'll see you then should i stop the
06:54
cameras or are you going to be ready to go i'm going to go i'm going to go shut your mouth i'm going to go
06:59
am i or are you or not yeah see this is what takes up space on the server no pause it then can't work in
07:08
these conditions
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