Reviewed: Specialized Diverge Carbon Comp

The brand new Specialized Diverge was launched to the world earlier this month and, now that I’ve had this bike on test for about three weeks, I wanted to bring you a more in-depth look than just a First Ride, as it’s a bike that needs a bit of looking at.

The most obvious thing about the new Specialized Diverge range is the front suspension. While reasonably subtle, it’s hard to miss the flexible rubber bellows below the stem that hides the 20mm of Future Shock front suspension. Specialized’s idea is to suspend the rider and not the bike, so that it has minimal effect on the bikes steering and handling – and it’s way lighter than making a whole suspension fork.

This is the second generation of Diverge and it has been long in coming. Sagan was riding a prototype of the frame at the 2018 Paris Roubaix race and the production frame was raced in 2019. In order to evolve it from the original Diverge, Specialized’s engineers did a lot of cutting up of old frames and sticking on new front ends, to try different angles and reaches. They ended up making the bike a little longer, a little slacker and not quite as low in the BB as the previous model.

Sizing and setup

I spent longer than normal trying to work out the right size to order in for the Diverge. I’d not ridden the original one, so I had no real comparison. Specialized has ‘longerised’ the new Diverge, extending the frames reach, slackening the head angle and fitting a longer offset fork. I normally run a 54cm road and ‘cross bike, so that pointed to the 52cm frame for me, with a 542mm top tube, which makes reasonable sense given the frame’s sloping top tube. 

However, when building the bike up, the frame – while plenty long enough – seemed tiny in the vertical plane. Even with the 20mm of suspension travel under the stem, and what looks like the middle of the three moulded spacers fitted, the (riser) drop bar tops were lower than those on my road bike! I decided to commit myself to roadie hell and flipped the stem upwards to give a liveable handlebar height, even though I still found it a pretty committing position off road – plus it put the (metal capped) handlebar ends in line with potentially punching holes in the side of the top tube in a crash. Luckily it didn’t come to that. 

The sizing is very much a ‘try before you buy’ kind of thing anyway as the frame actually measures 43cm c-t on the seat tube, so all of your years of road bike sizing are out the window. However, I think it’s more likely that you’d be coming to this as a mountain biker or cyclocross rider than a pure road rider. There’s too much rule breaking going on here to attract the pure roadie. Room for 50mm+ tyres? Suspension? Dropped top tube? Loads of bottle bosses? Can’t see that fitting in the crowd at the Rapha cafe…

This Carbon Comp level bike features a nearly complete Shimano GRX 2×11 setup with Shimano providing gears and brakes. The only non-GRX bit of the transmission is the wheels, which feature Specialized own-brand hubs laced to pleasingly chunky (24mm internal) DT Swiss G540 rims, which look carbon fibre from their profile but are pretty bombproof alloy instead. 

Keeping with the wheels, the Diverge Comp Carbon features Specialized’s 700C Pathfinder Pro tubeless-ready tyres (though they come with tubes) in a 38mm width. These chunky looking carcasses feature a completely slick centre section with a generous diamond tread over the shoulders of the tyres – ‘The ultimate combination of speed and traction for mixed surface performance’ apparently. It’s worth mentioning that there’s MASSIVE tyre clearance, front and rear.

The rest of the components are, as you might expect, from Specialized’s own huge accessory category. The handlebars are the Adventure Gear Hover and they feature all sorts of curves. As well as having an almost riser-bar tops situation, the bars flare out, from around 42cm by the brake hoods (end to end) to 48cm at the bottom of the drops. 

The stem is a 75mm job, topped with the control for the Future Shock. There’s no visible headset adjustment as that all takes place very neatly under that aero headset spacer. However, to get to it, you’ll need a tiny Allen key (something like 1.5mm) to get the top knob off – not something you’re likely to have on your trail tool.

The seatpost is a skinny (and long!) Roval Terra Carbon post, which gives a good amount of flex and trail buzz insulation. It slipped for the first few rides, but a good clean and some fibregrip seemed to fix that. The saddle is a Body Geometry Power Sport in the new style of cropped road saddles. Odd to look at if you’ve not seen them before, but comfy to ride.

SWAT storage

Specialized is very proud that it’s managed to incorporate a SWAT door, first seen on the mountain bike range, into the frame. It’s a hole in the top of the sizeable downtube that allows access to the previously unused space inside the downtube. This allows you to stash a jacket and a tube (and a tool and a CO2) inside the downtube, under the bottle cage. 

Talking of cages, there are many bottle bosses on the Diverge Carbon Comp frame. Two in the main frame, one under the downtube, a ‘bento box’ one on the top tube (for fitting snack bags securely) and there are bottle bosses on the sides of each fork leg. Obviously they’re expecting you to be going a long way. It does seem a little odd to have all of this water and luggage capacity if you’ve got such a small main triangle, as that would appear to limit your storage space within it, but this kind of bike is probably aimed at the ‘fast and light’ rider rather than the ‘we’ve brought a full cheese-board along’ crew.  

The Ride

Bike Specs

• FRAME Specialized Diverge FACT 9r carbon, SWAT™ Door integration, Future Shock suspension, threaded BB, internal routing, 12x142mm thru-axle, flat-mount disc
• SUSPENSION FORK Future Shock 2.0 w/ Damper, Smooth Boot, FACT carbon, 12×100 mm thru-axle, flat-mount
• HANDLEBARS Specialized Adventure Gear Hover, 103mm drop x 70mm reach x 12º flare
• STEM Future Stem, Comp, w/Integrated computer mount
• SADDLE Body Geometry Power Sport, hollow Cr-Mo rails
• SEATPOST Roval Terra Carbon Seat Post, 20mm Offset
• SHIFT LEVERS Shimano GRX 810 hydraulic brake levers, mechanical shifting
• FRONT DERAILLEUR Shimano GRX RX810, braze-on
• REAR DERAILLEUR Shimano GRX RX810, 11-speed
• CASSETTE Shimano Ultegra, 11-speed, 11-34t
• CRANKSET Shimano GRX RX810-2
• BOTTOM BRACKET Shimano threaded
• CHAIN Shimano Ultegra, 11-speed
• WHEELS & TYRES
• FRONT TIRE Pathfinder Pro, 2Bliss Ready, transparent sidewall, 700x38mm
• REAR TIRE Pathfinder Pro, 2Bliss Ready, transparent sidewall, 700x38mm
• INNER TUBES 700×28/38mm, 48mm Presta valve
• FRONT WHEEL DT Swiss G540 rim, 24mm internal width, tubeless ready, 24h, Specialized full sealed bearing thru axle hub, centerlock disc, DT Swiss Champion 14G stainless steel spokes, DT Swiss brass nipples
• REAR WHEEL DT Swiss G540 rim, 24mm inner width, tubeless ready, 24h, Specialized full sealed bearing thru axle hub, centerlock disc, alloy freehub body, DT Swiss Champion 14G stainless steel spokes, DT Swiss brass nipples
• SWAT Integrated SWAT door, internal storage system
• FRONT BRAKE Shimano GRX 810, hydraulic disc
• REAR BRAKE Shimano GRX 810, hydraulic disc
• Price: £3399

More info from: Specialized.com

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