El Chaba

Yes, the lever situation then was a funny one. That was right at the time when Mafac was going under. They introduced the LSX brake set with a set of very nice levers to go with it. Photos of those levers on team bikes are very rare. Pretty soon, all of the bikes seemed to have either older Mafac (drilled) levers or the Weinmann Carrera levers. I don’t know if it was because of crash damage ( pro bikes go through brake levers almost like tires or chains) or if the shape was preferred by the riders. The Weinmann Carrera shape is very close to Campagnolo ( the hoods are perfectly interchangeable). As Mafac disappeared, there must have been an informal agreement with Weinmann, and then Weinmann was brought in as the brake supplier. Starting in 1985, the “ Dia Compe” levers started to appear on the team bikes to take advantage of the new trend of aero cable routing. There had been a long association between Weinmann and Dia Compe with Dia Compe licensing designs from Weinmann. The same was true for the Weinmann Carrera 400 which Dia Compe made as the Gran Compe( with some slightly different hardware). You see those aero levers being used in photos of the LaRedoute team riders at that time period as well.