The racing bike world has finally arrived in the era of the eleven-speed groupset - SRAM is the last major supplier to introduce the eleven-speed transmission with the Red 22 and Force 22 groupsets. The Americans admit somewhat contritely that this important update comes at an unfavourable time in the product cycle: the Red was only presented last year as a comprehensively revised new ten-speed groupset.
Charles Becker, the manager responsible for SRAM's road bike components, explains the fact that SRAM is already doing it again as a tactical measure: "We didn't want to introduce a third standard. There is simply no room for eleven sprockets on the old freewheels. If we had come up with it earlier, Shimano would definitely have designed its freehub differently than we did. We had to wait for Shimano." The engineers in Schweinfurt would have had their own ideas to comfortably solve the space problem on the rear wheel caused by the increasing number of sprockets. "We would have liked to have gone for a 135 millimetre hub width, as is standard on mountain bikes. The current 130 leads to problems with the spoke angles and the space between the rear derailleur and spokes, and this becomes even more critical in combination with disc brakes. But we don't make the rules," Becker continues.
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Here you can find more detailed pictures of the new SRAM Red 22:
Here you can see the video of the new SRAM RED 22:
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