Plus none of these manufacturers offer a repair service on their $700-800 rear derailleurs. It’s totally ridiculous that you can’t repair such an expensive item when all it may need is a tiny new $10 circuit board or $5 servo motor.
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Interestingly Ben O’Connor is using 54-39 chain ring on his new BMC prototype
We got a Dream Build with the new grupo!
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Yeah, Campag apparently said at the launch that their sponsored pros would likely be staying with their older 12spd cranks / CR. They discussed it in the Geel Warning podcast from Escape Collective.
Totally agreed.
When I got my new road bike with Force AXS eTap, my LBS warned me that I should be careful with the battery tab (the tab that secures your battery). It can easily break off and apparently SRAM’s official position is that this necessitates a new RD. WTF. What does a plastic tab cost? Cents, right?
Man to have that guy’s thumb strength 
I’ve never really bought in to the drivetrain friction argument, first with AXS and now with SR WL.
First, the ‘famous’ study that always gets dragged out wouldn’t pass scrutiny at the high school level of science, in that so many extra conditions changed in their experiment. For any meaningful comparison, you really must compare like with like, and in many ways, it didn’t; 1x vs 2x, different chains, different pulley wheels, and different cogs. Was the same lube used? What was the wear on the drivetrains?
Yes, the physics is fairly indisputable - bigger rings have reduced vs losses vs smaller ones in identical ratios - but for the numbers to be meaningful, everything else has to be equal.
In fairness, I so also think the study was intended as a 1x vs 2x comparison, but has subsequently been hitched to a different argument (i.e. ratios)
In any case, I’d venture a guess that when all of the variable above are controlled for, the difference between ‘SRAM’ ratios and conventionaa ratios in terms of drivetrain resistance is pretty minor.
Next, it’s impossible to quantify definitively the improvement in resistance you get from staying in the big chainring for longer, or conversely, if that actually leads to more cross-chaining and bad chainlines.
Finally, the whole thing totally ignores the fact that anyone without very serious watts is almost always going down a significant descent when they’re using the 10t and drivetrain resistance is likely a very, very small fraction of the total force you need to overcome.
I’m very firmly in the camp that for >99% of riders, worrying about AXS/SR WL ratios is majoring in the minors to the point it’s simply an irrelevance. If you’re a national standard tt-er or a Cat 1 racer at the sharp end of the field, then ok, fair enough, but everyone else is looking for pennies while ignoring the pounds elsewhere.
For Campagnolo’s pro teams, at their watts and speeds, there could be an issue, and that’s probably significant from a marketing perspective.
So while there are probably plenty of reasons not to buy SR WL (shall we start with the price? 
), ratios shouldn’t be one of them for most of us.
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I think one factor seems to be that Shimano’s chains are more efficient than SRAM chains. Unfortunately, they did not compare all four setups (1x/2x Shimano and SRAM) to sus out where the differences come from.
Just from a pragmatic point of view, 1x seems to have gained popularity in the gravel community. It seems that the majority of top athletes ran a 1x mullet setup at Unbound. Now a few road teams are toying with 1x or quasi-1x setups (1x + Classified Powershift hub).
Campag’s Ekar groupset seems ahead of the curve. If it didn’t have that weird thumbshifter, I would probably run an Ekar groupset on my 3T Strada.
I’ve not done a full scientific test, but you can feel that small:small is draggy.
When I got into riding my perception was that the top tier groupsets were for top end racers. Focusing on low weight, brilliant function and ratios for racing. If you weren’t interested in that then you’d save a few quid and take a lower tier groupset that would have ratios to match your needs. I don’t know what’s changed?
Now the mid tier groupsets are so similar functionally to the top tier, it actually makes even more sense for the mid tier to have ‘everyday’ ratios and the top tier to go low weight and ‘race’ ratios!
Why do I have to go to a third party to get racing ratios with Shimano/SRAM/Campag? Why doesn’t the top end Groupset come with the option of a (say) 56/42?
Dura Ace 12sp offers a 54/40 for those that really need it. Also, an AXS 50/37 with the 10t cog is actually a slightly bigger top gear.
All that said, these things are very rare because they are very rarely needed, in the grand scheme of things. Very few people indeed have a use for a 54/40.
I didn’t realise that about Dura Ace, I stand corrected! Good to know and it would make me consider going 12s with them when I do the switch. The old 55t on 11s was basically impossible to get hold of so you had to go third party.
I guess it depends on who you hang around with. I don’t see anyone who ‘needs’ Super Record / Dura Ace. But I see a lot of people who need 54t+ for racing
I never ride small-small or even small-next smallest.
Where I notice an issue is with 52x11. On the trainer especially, I see the sloppy articulation of the chain when it goes around the 11 toothed cog.
I’ve never ridden a 10 toothed cog.
The cogs though are the least of my issue. I’m sure that I’ll get along fine with a rarely used 10 toothed cog.
I used to live in a flat and windy part of NM where 52x11 was a weekly occurrence - group ride, tail wind, motoring at 35mph… That was so fun!
This is something that is not being written much about in reviews. The fact that you can potentially run this with your existing cranks and sprockets and upgrade the other essentials is quite, quite interesting. It may be a “you can, but we don’t recommend” type thing that Campy may want to keep hush hush maybe?
That would be a definite yes given how Campy is notorious for changing things like BCD or chain interior width to make sure things are incompatible with each other (even within Campy itself). They have tended to prefer the view of “you buy the entire grupo and nothing else”
That said, if they were opening things up to being more mix and match within Campy, that would be rad
Because this gearing makes no sense for even extremely fit amateurs. Pros with an FTP north of 5.5 W/kg/400 W need different gears than us. To be able to climb anything with such gearing means you need to be very strong. Or you need to live in a flat area. If you are 20 % weaker, say 4.5 W/kg, you need a 20 % easier climbing gear ratio to pedal at the same cadence. That’s 1-to-1 gearing. At 4.5 W/kg you are way fitter than average amongst TR’s athletes. Why do you want pro gearing?!?
Even with 42:10 you spin out at 65ish km/h. How much more quickly do need to go? Efficiency matters, but Why worry about marginal gains when most people are leaving non-marginal gains on the table? Do larger cogs matter when you haven’t cleaned your drivetrain in 3 months?
At those speeds your self-selected cadence is 80–90? Seems a tad low. At those speeds I’m doing about 100 rpm.
Because 5.5W/kg / 400W is absolutely not just the realm of pros, but also (some, not all) amateurs who would be looking for a high performing groupset. I’m arguing that top spec groupsets should offer a performance gearing option.
42:10 would be too low gearing for my needs on the road (even before getting into the inefficiencies). I have 46:11 on my gravel bike and it often isn’t suitable for high intensity intervals or through and off on the roads round here, let alone using it in competitive road racing. You can very quickly be under geared, whether that’s by power output, downhill or tailwind.
Racing speeds can be very high. You don’t want to have to spend virtually the entire race in your 10t and whenever you want to attack you’re forced to ride at 110rpm. You might as well have a (very inefficient) single speed 
Who on earth is dropping £5k on a groupset to not clean it?! Someone with no interest in performance/marginal gains could maybe just buy a cheaper groupset? Or they could still buy the bike bling and cake it in crud, since I’m only advocating that manufacturers sell the option of race gearing on their top end performance groupset that they market to us by showing the WT pros using it.
Are you sure?
I think 5.5 W/kg is way, way outside of the realm of amateurs. Have a look at the statistics across TR’s user base: using the graphical Bell curve calculator from this post only about 0.03 % of TR athletes have a relative FTP of 5.5 W/kg or above. (For comparison, I peaked at 4.7 W/kg last season, which puts me in the top-1 %.) The average is close to 3 W/kg. And this data only includes TR athletes, and I reckon that if we were to include more average people, we’d see even smaller numbers.
The share of potential customers for which such ridiculous gearing is suitable is really tiny. And regular road gearing (including a compact/compact equivalent setup) is overgearing for the vast majority of customers. Instead, in every situation I can think of, I would advise people to prioritize their lower gears rather than the other way around. There are plenty of prolonged climbs that, when I do them at about 3.5 W/kg (= top of my Z2), I need to go as slow as 55ish rpm on my lowest gear, 42:36 = 1.17 = 34:29. Most people would probably want to have three additional climbing gears.
I have 42:10 on my aero road bike, and I only spin out in situations when I would basically spin out with any gearing, i. e. prolonged, steep descents. On things like crit races, which are essentially flat where I live, I don’t ever touch my top gear. At speeds of 38–50 km/h, I’m typically in 42:12–42:14 (with a self-selected cadence of about 95–105 rpm). On hillier rides I use my 42:11 much less than either 42:12 or 42:10. The latter is my overdrive gear. (I know this, because I have an electronic groupset and it plots gear/time and gear/power diagrams.)
Have you done the math?
In my experience, pedaling becomes a bit tedious once I exceed about 58–60 km/h, which comes out to about 110 rpm in my top gear. My legs don’t like the combination of the light load (= low power output) and high rpm. I’m not a sprinter, so I can’t go that fast (= bike speed, not cadence) for long, unless I go downhill. On prolonged downhills, the limiting factor isn’t gearing, but bike handling skills (!), traffic (!), terrain and road conditions. I’d spin out any gear (including 52:11 or higher). On (false) flats, even in a group with fair wind, I rarely go faster than 55 km/h.
Even if your self-selected cadence is 90 rpm, you’d still be doing close to 50 km/h in 42:10 or 46:11. That seems plenty fast for most circumstances, including the races I have participated in.
It’s my bread and butter 
I guess my road races / crits are just higher speed. Important parts of races can be 60kph quite frequently.
If you live in the big hills then I agree you wouldn’t choose big chainrings. But everyone lives in different places. As the (supposedly) most performance oriented groupset it would be better to offer choice for performance oriented riders.
Because nearly 100% of the market that can afford high end groupsets like this are wealthy middle aged men who aren’t pros and don’t want huge gearing. They’re tailoring them to the market. Not having options available is really dumb though.
That said, most keen time trialists (and triathletes) want huge chainrings, 58t is very common. Not selling that or even being compatible with it is a big problem.
For all the people talking about spinning out speeds; Sure, you can spin a really high cadence and technically go very fast with small chainrings, but is that comfortable for sustained riding?
There’s a reason a cadence of 120rpm isn’t anyone’s average, and there’s a big variation in what’s comfortable for different riders.
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