After a decade-long hiatus, Zipp has revived its 202 wheelset, with a bold weight claim to suit the world’s best climbers. At just 1,090g, Zipp says its new 202 NSW is the lightest road wheelset it has ever made.
The slimming down in weight is credited to a lightweight hub and the brand’s lightest and most complex carbon road rim to date. However, there’s no sign of carbon spokes in the new 202 SW wheels, as Zipp sticks with steel for practicality and future-proofing.
The rims are the shallowest in Zipp’s current road range too, at 35mm on both front and rear. Feedback from the pro teams behind Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and Tom Pidcock however, means the 202 NSW opt for a 23mm hookless rim bed to pair with 28-32mm tyres.
Already in action on the WorldTour’s toughest mountain stages, the complete Zipp 202 NSW wheelset costs £3,395/€3,800/$4,200.
A wheel for race-defining climbs
Zipp’s new 202 wheelset joins the brand’s top-level NSW range, which has been used by pro riders for almost a decade now. The newest addition revives the 202 name almost ten years after the release of the shallow rim 202 NSW in 2017.
This wheelset however picks up from the 353 NSW, unveiled last year, as the brand looked to create a lighter product for pro teams conscious of balancing aero benefits to recapture bike weights near the UCI’s weight limit of 6.8kg.
‘In my mind, I thought everyone [in the peloton] was at 6.8kg,’ says Zipp’s Design Engineer Ben Waite. ‘A lot of the pro bikes now are 7.3 or 7.4kg. That showed us that everyone’s bought into pure aero, even on mountain stages. They do a lot of testing for that, but they’re always trying to save weight. So, we thought about how to allow these teams to get to 6.8kg, especially on those important days in the mountains.’
Zipp then sent its pro teams sets of early iterations of the 202 NSW with different spokes and rim weights. With feedback from the likes of Tom Pidcock, Marlen Reusser and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, the wheels were developed for those key moments on the uphill gradients.
‘This isn’t the everyday wheel. It’s lightweight and snappy,’ says Waite. ‘In a race, you choose a wheel that is specifically designed around that decision point – and that almost always happens on a climb. So that’s what we designed for. At the same time, that climb could be the Angliru, the Mur de Huy, or it could be a bunch of rolling hills in an amateur road race, and you just need to be able to punch over that final rolling hill to make the separation.’
As such, the final 202 NSW got their first pro outing during the mountain stages at the Volta a Catalunya last month, with Tom Pidcock among the Pinarello-Q36.5 riders to ride an unbranded pair.
Lightweight but no carbon spokes
The 202 NSW wheelset is said to be the brand’s lightest, coming in at 1,090g per pair. That is approximately 200g lighter than Zipp’s 353 NSW wheels released last year.
Part of this is attributed to the lightweight ZR1 SL hub, which was unveiled alongside the 353 NSW wheelset. The hubset, produced internally by Zipp’s German team, weighs a claimed 306g, which is attributed to lighter bearings and a smaller hub shell. Still, the hubset offers 66 points of engagement at the freehub, ceramic bearings and drivetrain compatibility with SRAM, Shimano and Campagnolo.
While the 202s have managed to take the prize as Zipp’s lightest wheelset, the brand has decided against carbon spokes despite rival brands moving in that direction.
‘It’s about usability and repairability,’ Zipp product manager Nathan Schickel says. ‘If you’re not close to your normal bike shop and you break a spoke, you can’t get carbon spokes. They’re not available in the aftermarket just yet.
‘In terms of ride feel, carbon spokes are good, but it’s a different ride feel from steel. It’s a stiffer ride, and the vibration loss is totally different in comparison. Yes, they’re lighter, but we needed to be cautious and evaluate the wheel as a complete system. The hubs would have to be completely reworked, for starters.’
‘There are still some things to improve and explore with carbon spokes,’ Waite adds. ‘For instance, you can’t cross the spokes because carbon will rub and wear, and we’re not sure what the effect of that is.’
‘We’re not sure about carbon spokes’ durability. The material works in a different way in regard to tension. Carbon spokes also handle more force while riding, so we’re not sure what that means long term for the spokes outside of that big weight claim.’
Instead, the 202 NSW uses Alpina Hyperlite spokes, which were chosen for their ‘light weight and quality’ as Zipp’s engineers emphasise. There are 20 spokes in each wheel, with each weighing between 3g and 4g, around double the weight of carbon equivalents found on rival brands. That said, Waite is adamant that the overall system weight wasn’t compromised by their choice of spoke material.
Shallow rims for 28mm tyres
To minimise weight, the 202 NSW adopt a shallow rim depth. These come to 35mm on both the front and rear, which positions the 202 NSW as the shallowest in Zipp’s current road range. Like the rest of the NSW range, the 202s are also hookless.
The rims use a constant cross-section, but Zipp says the composite design used for the 202 is the brand’s most advanced carbon laminate to date. In total, it uses 50 pieces of carbon that mix intermediate modulus and high modulus carbon fibre to localise stiffness within the rim, with its stiffest fibre toward the spoke bed for better torsional power transfer. To bear impact better, the brand has used its toughest material towards the tyre bed by incorporating a stronger resin.
The internal width stands at 23mm. The wheels are optimised for 28mm wide tyres, but they can mount tyres between 28mm and 32mm in width. According to Waite, this decision was heavily influenced by Zipp’s pro partners, despite general trends moving towards tyres wider than 28mm and 30mm.
‘If we were in a vacuum, these wheels would have had a 25mm internal designed for 30mm tyres. But it feels like some of our pro teams have really levelled out at 28mm, and they don’t want to make the jump to 30mm yet. Some of that is down to the availability of 30mm in the [Vittoria] Corsa Pro Speed or [Continental] TT. They’ve got that now, but they’re still riding 28mm tyres. So for our project, all these decisions were taken with this in mind in regard to depth and internal width. That was a big influence from the start.’
Low inertia for snappier response
While weight is the main headline for the 202 NSW wheels, the aerodynamic features are relatively small.
Like the rest of the NSW line-up, wind tunnel, CFD and rider testing helped to refine the profile of the wheels. However, the shallow rim allows less space for aero tricks. Instead, the brand emphasises the influence of tyre choice in improving aero results.
‘For this shallow of a rim, you don’t need big bumps to improve the aero performance,’ Waite says. ‘In all of our testing, the side force on the wheels was so low that we didn’t need anything that would add weight or complexity to the design. That’s why we kept it as a constant cross-section in the rim.’
In that case, the brand was keen to make sure the rider maintains speed on the flat. For this, Waite praises the 202’s low rotational inertia, which is helped by the feathery rims.
‘Inertia is the wheel’s resistance to being spun, and it’s the mass times the radius squared,’ Waite says. ‘So, if your hub is heavy, it’s not that big of a deal. But if the rim is heavy, you can really feel that difference. The energy it takes to spin up a heavier rim is a lot more than it is to spin a lighter one. The simple physics of rotational inertia is a big deal for how the wheels accelerate or respond.’
Spec and prices
The 202 NSW wheelset is available to buy now from sram.com. The front wheel costs £1,520/€1,700/$1,900 and the rear £1,875/€2,100/$2,300. The wheels are compatible with the three major drivetrain brands. Plus, Zipp offers a lifetime guarantee for the 202 NSW.
Zipp 202 NSW spec
- Rim depth: 35mm
- Internal rim width: 23mm
- Max system weight: 115kg
- Max tyre pressure: 73 psi/5.0 bar
- Spokes: Alpina Hyperlite
- Bearings: Custom hybrid ceramic
- Claimed weight: 1,090g per pair
- Price: £3,395 / €3,800 / $4,200