FULCRUM | CICLI CORSA

Fulcrum SHARQ Wheelset

Designed to elevate the riding experience on mixed terrain, from asphalt to gravel roads, SHARQ is the latest creation from the Fulcrum Red Room Lab.

The result of careful research and advanced engineering, it offers a unique combination of maneuverability, aerodynamics, responsiveness, and durability thanks to a new rim and spoke design.

The new SHARQ features a 25mm internal channel, providing a valid compromise for both road wheels with a minimum of 30mm, ensuring aerodynamics and improved rolling resistance, as well as larger and knobbier tires, offering solid support to the tire structure for off-road use. To make it compatible with tubeless and tubed systems, the rim is equipped with mini-hooks, ensuring maximum safety. Following Fulcrum's practice, the bridge is not drilled, making it a native tubeless rim without the need for additional tape.

2-WAVE RIM: A COMBINATION OF WAVES

The new rim design – patent pending – is the result of an experimental process, where various solutions were tested under conditions of frontal and lateral wind to analyze their effects on maneuverability and aerodynamics. The result is called the 2-Wave Rim and is one of SHARQ's distinctive features: it features a symmetrical regular wave near the nose, which merges into an asymmetrical wave on the sides.

The profile height varies from 42 to 47 mm, respectively at the highest and lowest part of the wave. This new design allows for a balance of handling and reactivity parameters with excellent aerodynamics.

The new shape, combined with lamination using Fulcrum's proprietary FF100 carbon fiber and resin mix, has resulted in a lightweight and responsive rim: the total weight of the pair is only 1,440 g, while in terms of resistance to side wind, there is a 21% improvement in conditions of wind between 0° and 10° and up to 30% between 10° and 20° compared to a traditional profile of the same height.

AERODYNAMIC ADVANTAGES THANKS TO THE NEW A3RO SPOKE

SHARQ is a revolution, but also tradition. The new wheel fully embodies the Fulcrum philosophy and the desire to offer exclusive technologies and specific products to provide the best riding experience and high-level performance.

In this sense, to increase SHARQ's performance, we have developed A3RO: a new flat steel spoke, with a width of 3 mm and a thickness of 0.8 mm, which offers significant aerodynamic advantages. Furthermore, the hub-spoke interface has been redesigned: the hole features two additional slots coupled with a specific flattening at the base of the spoke, allowing it to remain aligned and not rotate, ensuring constant aerodynamic support.

The spokes never touch each other (no-touching spokes), allowing tension to be maintained over time and, therefore, ensuring the same level of performance throughout the product's entire life cycle without the need for mechanical interventions to overcome any tension drops.

The hub design follows the minimalist style already seen for the Speed and is characterized by the Cup & Cone technology: the cone-cup bearings feature USB™ ceramic balls that run on an integral through axle with a register ring for precise preloading and maximum smoothness.

EXCELLENCE ACHIEVED

Capable of traversing all terrains, from asphalt to gravel roads, with precision and speed, SHARQ is easy to handle in all conditions, even in strong crosswinds, offering aerodynamics and responsiveness worthy of the fastest road wheels, as well as the ability to withstand strong impacts and absorb terrain irregularities like the best gravel wheels.

The new addition to the range is the result of a research and development process that required more than 4,000 hours of design, laboratory testing, and field trials. Most of SHARQ's components, like other Fulcrum wheels, are manufactured internally, while externally sourced components are entrusted to a certified European network of partners, with a particular focus on production meticulousness and social responsibility. This allows us to work with extreme precision, offering a product that makes a difference, with immediately perceivable benefits for a perfect riding feeling.