At the bottom of the box containing the set of Hawk Racing 50mm clinchers were a pair of little boxes with some very interesting parts – Hawk’s BB30 bottom bracket. The Felt DA may have gotten the first crack at the clinchers, but the Quintana Roo CD0.1 was the first up for this particular review part. AeroGeeks put the new BB in last week, and now, with the weekend’s ride behind us, we come away with a single, solid impression of it: Hot knives wish they had butter like this.

Hawk claims that their bottom brackets use 80% less energy than the next most efficient bottom bracket, and while we cannot verify that claim, the legs tell us that this bottom bracket spins with an astonishing effortlessness that the OEM BB on the CD0.1 simply cannot match. Hawk manufactures them using stainless steel bearings which are fully sealed into their races, in addition to Hawk’s own lubrication (patent pending) system that keeps the cranks turning nicely. All of this in a package that is a reported 10% lighter than a ceramic setup.

Riding, two points stand out as noteworthy. First, during hard acceleration, there is this incredible sensation of gliding in the pedal stroke – the sense that the power you put down isn’t to fight the bike, but to propel it forward – that every last watt is turning the rear wheel instead of forcing itself through the drivetrain. Second, when coasting during those moments of weakness, the pedals felt as though they had no intention of slowing down, that their purpose is to keep pushing, and we were only too happy to oblige.

The quality of construction and engineering evident in these bottom brackets give us reason to suspect that while our first impressions were made on just a short (half century) ride, over the long term review, these bottom brackets will continue to impress us and remind us that sometimes even a hot knife has something to be envious of.