Jacob Vaughan races MONZA in London

Crystal Palace takes its name from the giant glass exhibition hall that dominated Hyde Park during the Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1854, it was relocated, piece by piece, to the top of Sydenham Hill in south London, giving the area a new name and a landmark visible for miles. Though the building was lost to fire in 1936, the name stuck. Today, Crystal Palace is a sanctuary of suburban calm: dog walkers, families, and flâneurs weaving their way through open parkland and paths.

Except on Tuesday nights. That’s when the bike racers turn up.

Crystal Palace Crits

Every week, riders stream in from all over London, majority by bike, mostly straight from the office. Numbers are pinned on, conversations are cut short, racing begins.

The Crystal Palace crits are grassroots racing at its purest: fast, technical, sketchy, and unapologetically hard. Crashes are part of the ritual. So is community. Everyone’s welcome, no frills, no egos, just a 1.3 km rollercoaster circuit and a bunch of riders going way too deep for a weeknight, pushing themselves, and each other, to the limit.

Jacob Vaughan, part of our Factor Racing cohort, is a regular. For Jacob, racing at Palace is part of the rhythm of the week. It’s not just about the laps, it's about the ride there, the catching up with friends, the banter and the suffering. It's racing for the love of it.

And that’s why we built the MONZA.

Argy bargy before sunset

The MONZA was created for riders like Jacob. For those who race not because it’s their job, but because it’s who they are. It's a purebred race bike, but unlike our WorldTour machines, shaped for the margins of elite performance, it’s built for riding and racing in the real world: being ready for any and every training ride, the journey to and from the race, the flat out wheel chasing that has you wishing you’d stayed at home yet you never regret.

“Crystal Palace Crits is a community and pulls in people from different cultures and backgrounds to all come and enjoy what we all love which is bike racing,” Jacob explained. “My dad raced here back in the day, and my grandparents would watch, now I’m racing, and my parents will come to watch. The work the organisers do each year to keep these Crits going is amazing.”

Tuesday nights at Crystal Palace aren’t glamorous. They’re better than that. They’re honest. And the MONZA is made for exactly that kind of racing.

“We’re lucky in London to have several different options of criterium circuits, it gives everyone a chance, no matter where you live or style of racer you are, to give it a shot at racing from beginner to elite,” Jacob continued. “I think it offers people an escape from the busy world we live in and gets you back to the basics of enjoying racing and mates.”

Jacob’s set-up

Jacob equipped his MONZA for the CP Crits with the new SRAM Force. The combo is perfect for situations like these crazy crits, where durability is an essential aspect of performance. When both bike and rider are apt to take a bit of punishment over the course of an evening of racing, material reliability becomes paramount.

For the race, Jacob had his MONZA set-up with an ideal gear combination for the terrain. The SRAM Force has a wide selection of options and Jacob opted for a 48-35T up front and a 10-33T in the rear.

He likes a particularly aggressive position, so uses a 120 mm stem length with a 40 cm wide bar. In the all-important choice of wheel and tire, he rode with the Black Inc FORTY FIVE wheelset and 28 mm tyres.

“I was really impressed with my initial ride on the MONZA. It’s everything I want a bike to be, since my bike is my vehicle whether that’s racing or getting to work as fast as possible in the morning commute rush,” Jacob explained.

“Racing at Crystal Palace gave me the chance to push the MONZA to the max. You can really throw the bike about into the corners but I was so impressed how responsive the bike was to accelerations and how stable it felt when at speed, something I’ve struggled to find with a lot of race bikes in the past. I love the utilisation of the down tube storage since it gives me the option to keep all my spare parts hidden away and keep the weight lower to ground to not affect the centre of gravity.”

This is the perfect set-up for everything from the chaos of the Crystal Palace Crits to the suffer-fest of your local chain gang paceline.

Now you can also order your Factor MONZA with the new SRAM Force.