The 2025 Vuelta a España began yesterday, the final Grand Tour of the season, and that’s a good excuse to look back at the Scott Addict RC ridden by Simon Yates, the last British winner, back in 2018.
There have only been two British winners in the 90-year history of the Vuelta. Chris Froome won in 2017 and was awarded the 2011 title several years after the event when Juan José Cobo was stripped of the victory for doping, and Simon Yates won in 2018.
Yates won the 2025 Giro d’Italia for Visma-Lease a Bike – the team of this year’s Vuelta favourite Jonas Vingegaard – but back in 2018 he was riding for Mitchelton-Scott, the Australian team that has since morphed into Jayco–AlUla.
Four former winners lined up on the start line that year – Fabio Aru, Vincenzo Nibali, Nairo Quintana, and Alejandro Valverde – but Yates took the race lead on Stage 9 and, after giving it up to Jesus Herrada for a couple of days, regained it when bagging a victory on the mountainous Stage 14. He held the maillot rojo (red jersey) for the rest of the race.
Yates was riding the Addict RC, Scott’s lightest model and one of the lightest production bikes in the world at the time, with a claimed 790g frame and 300g fork. Scott had added disc brakes to the Addict lineup for the 2017 product year, and Mitchelton-Scott began using them in 2018, but Yates was still on a rim brake bike. The UCI permitted the use of disc brakes in professional road racing on a permanent basis from July that year (after earlier trial spells), but this was very much a time of transition.
2018 Scott Addict RC Simon Yates riding © Cor Vos (credit: Cor Vos)
Yates could have ridden Scott’s Foil aero road bike, but he prioritised weight over aerodynamics. That was normal for GC contenders at the time. Although we saw Tadej Pogacar favouring the aero Colnago Y1Rs over the lighter V5Rs throughout the 2025 Tour de France, Yates preferred to go for the lightweight option to gain an advantage on the decisive climbs. That said, he was using the Syncros RR1.0 SL one-piece aero handlebar and wearing a Scott aero helmet rather than a more ventilated model, so aerodynamics was clearly something that the team was considering.
2018 Scott Addict RC handlebar © Cor Vos (credit: Cor Vos)
Back to the handlebar, and Yates was one of the few racers to have both sprint and forward-facing climbing shifter units hooked up to his Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groupset for multiple shift options. His Garmin Edge computer floated out front with a mount integrated into the Syncros handlebar.
2018 Scott Addict RC fork © Cor Vos (credit: Cor Vos)
Yates was riding with Shimano’s at-the-time new power meter, a switch from the SRM units that Mitchelton-Scott had previously used. There were matching Dura-Ace wheels, with a shallower front rim and a deeper rear rim, and 25mm-wide Continental Competition Pro Ltd tubular tyres glued to the rims. 25mm tubulars? This was only seven years ago, but things have changed a lot; tubeless and 28mm+ now dominate.
2018 Scott Addict RC rear derailleur © Cor Vos (credit: Cor Vos)
Yates rode a Scott Addict RC in standard team-issue black and yellow (as shown here) until the final stage of the 2018 Vuelta. Then he got a special edition race bike with the yellow Scott logos replaced with red ones, and matching red bar tape. Well, it’s not every day that you win a Grand Tour, is it?
At 172cm tall, Yates rode a size small Addict RC with a 110mm stem and 40cm wide handlebar. His saddle height was 69.8cm measured from the bottom bracket, and he used 170mm crank arms.
Images © Cor Vos