‘The original Addict Limited weighed 5.9kg, which was impressive for 2008,’ says Scott product designer Christian Holweck. ‘Back then parts were lighter, there were mechanical groupsets, tubular wheels and tiny cassettes. Today bikes are much heavier because of modern components and design trends, so we set ourselves the target of making the new Addict RC hit that old number: 5.9kg.
‘Whenever you ask your friends, “What do you consider to be a very lightweight bike?” we want the Addict RC to come to their minds first.’
Here is that bike, part homage, part engineering challenge, and every bit what Scott set out to create – the lightest production, fully integrated disc brake road bike in the world, a mere 5.87kg on my scales. I didn’t realise I needed a bike this light, but I want one.
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Scott Addict RC frame
‘Working backwards, subtracting other parts like the groupset, we calculated a raw frame could weigh no more than 600g for us to hit 5.9kg,’ says Holweck. ‘Painted with hardware [such as bottle bosses], the frame could weigh no more than 640g.’
If you’re wondering how light that is, Specialized claims its S-Works Aethos frame weighs 595g, but that’s for a non-aero, non-integrated cabling, 32mm-max tyre size frame. The Addict RC, by contrast, makes serious aero bike claims, has fully integrated cables and boasts room for up 34mm tyres (up from 28mm). It achieves all this with a new manufacturing process involving polypropylene mandrels.
‘Unlike conventional bladders, which can crinkle and leave wrinkles inside the carbon, PP mandrels leave a perfectly smooth inside surface with no excess resin,’ says Holweck, who goes on to explain PP mandrels can also be fully removed from the finished carbon pieces, again saving weight. Yet the Addict wasn’t designed for lightness alone.
The design brief was to honour the Addict RC as a road race bike first and foremost, the kind Tom Pidcock will ride in 2025. This redesign needed to mirror the ‘well-liked’ outgoing Addict’s geometry while mimicking the Foil RC’s geometry for easier swapping between bikes. To that end, this size medium Addict RC has 29mm lower stack (down to 543mm) and 5mm longer reach (up to 395mm) than the previous version, yet trail, chainstay length and centre of gravity remain largely unaffected.
The problem is wider tyres, which tend to jack up the bike, push out the rear end and lengthen the trail, so to compensate Scott dropped the BB height by 2mm, pushed the seat tube forward 5mm and increased fork offset to 44mm. This means chainstays still measure 410mm (the shortest Shimano recommends for good shifting) and trail stays around 58mm with 28-30mm tyres.
The sum total is a bike that handles every bit how I imagine a GC contender wants their bike to handle: nimble and reactive yet stable. And then comes the weight.
Scott Addict RC weight
The Addict RC is like nothing else I’ve ridden. Yes, the Aethos is as light but it’s not aero and it’s not fully integrated. And though the Fuji SL 1.1 (if anyone remembers that) weighed 5.11kg it had cables everywhere, tubular tyres and rim brakes. The Addict RC is in a league of its own in how it blends light weight and modern living.
What that league feels like is best described as this: it’s like you’re riding naked. It’s like there’s something missing that is normally there to make a bike a bike, but it turns out it’s not actually necessary. Pick the Addict up and it’s as though someone is secretly helping you lift it with fishing line. Then pedal it and everything from off-the-mark accelerations to side-to-side swinging feels, well… light.
I wish I had a better word than that, but the Addict is lightness personified. Or maybe deftness. Handling is exquisite in response terms; the bike nips and dives through corners with very limited rider input. Yet thanks to wider tyres the Addict is saved from skipping, holding firm the road in a way that’s often beyond lightweight bikes, which have a tendency to feel skittish.
That said, because of its weight this isn’t the most planted road bike out there, but to keep the clichés coming, it is one that rewards concentration. The frame is light but it’s also very stiff, which means it reacts easily to the road and therefore it offers greater feedback. That is, you can feel what the road is doing more quicky and precisely than your eyes could ever tell you, hence in essence you have more immediate data with which make decisions. I can only imagine how fast a pro rider with pro-level reactions could ride the Addict downhill.
How well this bike goes uphill is patently obvious – it’s stiff, it’s light, it climbs like the proverbial angel – but Holweck did provide an interesting rule of thumb to go with it: ‘You save one watt per 100g saved in weight over the average mountain stage,’ he says.
Riding the Scott Addict RC
Despite the weight, or perhaps more accurately because of it, the most surprising thing to me is how fast the Addict RC is. I knew it would be light, but speed was unexpected. This isn’t a strict speed machine, but I reckon it would compare favourably to the big aero dogs.
At 45kmh, Scott says the Addict RC is 12 watts more efficient than before and only nine watts slower than its aero flagship the Foil RC. Much of this comes from the frame, the head tube having slimmed down to reduce frontal area by 15%, and the seatstays now twist slightly inwards so they conspire with the rest of the frame to perform more like an aerofoil in the wind than a blunt square. Though not directly raised in a wind-tunnel, such tube shapes have been borrowed from the wind-tunnel-developed Foil RC.
Syncros’s one-piece bars (essentially the same as before, only 45g lighter at 285g) buy into the trend for narrow hoods, wider drops. So where once I’d expect to be riding a 42cm bar, the catchily named IC-R100-SL bars measure 400mm across the hoods but flare to 43mm across the drops, which in theory helps me hold a naturally narrower, and so faster, shape.
Of all the tweaks, that’s likely to be the one that will affect the Addict’s speed the most since the rider represents around 80% of a bike’s drag, however I think it’s the wheelset that brought me greatest sensation of speed.
At a claimed 1,170g the Syncros Capital SL 40s lead the chase up climbs, but at 40mm deep and 25mm wide internally they’re also able to carve usefully into the wind while mating smoothly with the tyres for a high-volume U-shape. Extra tyre width and volume reduces rolling resistance and increases grip, and the Addict is more comfortable because of it. The bike genuinely feels like it glides over rough stuff.
The Capitals use co-moulded carbon spokes, which are heavily bladed for more aero gains, albeit I feel they catch side winds slightly more. However this is a minor misdemeanour given how stiff these wheels are. Stamp on the pedals and the Addict shoots off, watts delivered efficiently to the tyre, which, being a mere 165g (claimed), doesn’t half help acceleration too.
On that note, there’s a bit of me thinks 165g is possibly too light and too fragile, and were I to buy the Addict I’d be considering a swap to tubeless tyres. But I can’t deny how rapidly the Schwalbe Aerothans roll, something Schwalbe attributes to both lightness and tube type – the Aerothan TPU-style tubes weigh a claimed 41g and are said to deliver tubeless-level rolling resistance.
Scott Addict RC review verdict
So good is so much of this bike that I haven’t yet gotten around to SRAM's latest Red AXS groupset. Suffice to say it was chosen by Scott as it’s the lightest groupset of the Big Three and it works flawlessly. The brakes especially are fantastic.
Then there are nice touches on the frame. Every major bolt is a Torx T25 save for the thru-axles, which are 6mm, and stuck in the bar end is a mini-tool that weighs just 29g and services both. There’s a neat little clearance diagram tucked behind the seat tube that stipulates tyre clearance, and there’s an option for a different seatpost with a neat and satisfyingly magnet-mounted integrated rear light. Oh, and that out-front mount – it’s printed in titanium and weighs just 9.6g.
That’s actually my only criticism. That mount doesn’t come with the bike, it costs £99.99 extra, and this is a near-£13k rig already. But aside from that (and the overall price, but this is just bikes today), I stand by what I said about the Addict. This is as good as a bike can be right now, and for 2025 so far, that makes the Addict RC Ultimate utterly phenomenal.
Scott Addict RC Ultimate: specs
- Price: £12,799
- Weight: 5.87kg (medium)
- Groupset: SRAM Red AXS
- Wheels: Syncros Capital SL 40mm
- Tyres: Schwalbe Aerothan 29mm tube-type
- Bar/stem: Syncros IC-R100-SL Carbon combo
- Seatpost: Syncros SP-R100-SL
- Saddle: Syncros Belcarra Regular SL saddle,
- Contact: scott-sports.com
