Fulcrum SHARQ Wheels Launch: Fast Wheels for All Roads

Designed to enhance the riding experience on mixed terrain, from asphalt to dirt roads, SHARQ is the latest innovation from the Fulcrum Red Room Lab. The result of extensive research and advanced engineering, it offers a unique combination of handling, aerodynamics, responsiveness, and durability thanks to its new rim and spoke design.

Source: press release

It’s spelled “SHARQ,” but it’s pronounced “new dimension.” At least at Fulcrum, as the brand celebrates its twentieth year of activity by expanding its range with the first product entirely dedicated to endurance and all-road use. The name “SHARQ” embodies the essence of this new wheel with a precise character: a convergence of flexibility, handling, aerodynamics, responsiveness, and comfort, characteristics inherited from the experience gained with Speed, Wind, and Rapid Red Carbon.

Designed to enhance the riding experience on mixed terrain, from asphalt to dirt roads, SHARQ is the result of extensive research, advanced engineering, and a long design and testing process, all to ensure the best possible performance. All this with a 100% controlled supply chain, where all components are made in Europe and assembled in the brand’s factories.

The new Sharq features a 25 mm internal width, a good compromise for road tires of 30 mm minimum, ensuring aerodynamics and improving rolling resistance, as well as for wider, knobby tires, offering effective support to the tire structure for off-road use. To ensure compatibility with both tubeless and tubed systems, the rim is equipped with a mini-hook, guaranteeing maximum safety.
As is Fulcrum tradition, the rim wall is undrilled, making it tubeless compatible without the need for rim tape.

2-Wave Rim: a combination of waves
The new rim design – patent pending – is the result of an experimental process during which Fulcrum analyzed the reactions of different solutions to head-on and side wind conditions affecting handling and aerodynamics.

The result of this process is called the 2-Wave Rim, and it is one of SHARQ’s distinctive features: it involves a rim with a regular symmetrical wave, which transforms into an asymmetrical wave on the sides. The rim depth varies between 42 and 47 mm, at the highest and lowest parts of the wave. This new design balances handling and responsiveness parameters with excellent aerodynamics.
The new shape, combined with a lamination process using Fulcrum’s secret FF100 resin and carbon fiber blend, has resulted in a light and responsive rim: the total weight of the pair is only 1440 g, while crosswind resistance shows a 21% improvement in wind conditions between 0° and 10° and up to 30% between 10° and 20°, compared to a traditional rim depth of the same height.

Aerodynamic advantages thanks to the new A3RO aerodynamic spokes
SHARQ is synonymous with revolution, but also with tradition. The new wheel fully aligns with Fulcrum’s philosophy and its desire to offer exclusive technologies and specific products to provide an optimal riding experience and high-level performance.

In this regard, to enhance SHARQ’s performance, Fulcrum developed A3RO: a new flat stainless steel spoke, 3 mm wide and 0.8 mm thick, offering significant aerodynamic advantages. Furthermore, the hub-spoke interface has been revised: the hole features two additional slots coupled with a specific flattening on the spoke base, which allows the spoke to remain aligned and not rotate, thus ensuring constant aerodynamic support.
The spokes never touch each other (“no-touching spokes”), which helps maintain tension over time and, consequently, ensures the same level of performance throughout the product’s life cycle, without the need for mechanical intervention to remedy any tension drops.
The hub design respects the minimalist style already adopted for the Speed model and is distinguished by Cup & Cone technology: the cup-and-cone bearings feature USBTM ceramic balls that glide on an integral thru-axle with an adjustment ring for extremely precise preload and maximum fluidity.

Accessible behavior
Capable of precisely and quickly traversing all terrains, from asphalt to dirt roads, SHARQ is easy to steer in all conditions, including strong crosswinds, offering aerodynamics and responsiveness worthy of the most high-performance road wheels, but also an 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 over 4000 hours of design, laboratory tests, and field trials.

Most of SHARQ’s components, as is the case for other wheels, are manufactured in-house, while for those produced externally, Fulcrum relies on a network of certified European partners who prioritize meticulous production and social responsibility. This allows for extremely precise work, offering a product capable of making a difference, with immediately perceptible advantages for a perfect riding sensation.