For this all-new Stumpjumper, it started with the bike’s backbone: the frame. Control, efficiency, durability, and weight savings are all born from the frame itself. Recent breakthroughs in our carbon lab resulted in a new understanding of how shape affects a frame’s performance. Shape, not material, determines the vast majority of a frame’s weight, stiffness, and durability. Thanks to the largest Finite Element Analysis study we have ever undertaken, we’ve optimized the dimensions and radii of the Stumpy’s frame tubes and their intersections, ensuring that every fiber of carbon is delivering the most strength and stiffness it possibly can. When every piece of carbon is truly pulling its own weight, “lazy” material that would otherwise hide in unoptimized corners is totally eliminated.

While material shape delivers the vast majority of a frame’s performance, for a bike like the Stumpjumper we coaxed every last gram of performance out of the frame. That meant utilizing the strongest, most expensive carbon we’ve ever built a mountain bike with. We selected the optimal material for every layer of carbon, all chosen to deliver the maximum performance needed in that region of the frame. This — along with our careful study of shape — is what allowed us to achieve our rider-focused performance targets with the minimum amount of material.