GCN (YouTube) · 5 de abril de 2026 · por GCN

How Much Faster Is A Modern Superbike At Paris-Roubaix?

Paris-Roubaix is "The Hell of the North" for a reason. With 50km of brutal, bone-shaking cobbles, riders and mechanics have spent decades trying to "tame" the pave. In the early 90s, one piece of tech changed the game: the RockShox Paris-Roubaix SL suspension fork. Between 1991 and 1994, these 30mm travel forks ruled the roost, winning three editions of the race before mysteriously vanishing from the pro peloton. In this video, we take a near-perfect replica of Greg LeMond’s 1991 Z-Team bike, and we head to the "four-star" cobbles of Bath's Royal Crescent to run a test with classic lugged steel Bottecchia and a Mathieu van der Poel-style Canyon Aeroad with 32mm tyres. Can a 30-year-old mechanical suspension outperform modern pneumatic tech? And why did the pros stop using forks? The dat