The Grand Départ of the Tour de France is an unusual dilemma for a tech journalist.
There’s rarely an onslaught of brand-new bikes like you’ll find at the Tour d’Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes warm-up race before it, because teams don’t want to turn up to the biggest race of the season on tech that hasn’t already been tested in a racing environment.
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There are a couple of things going on here. Firstly, check out that additional strut that sits behind the head tube is an unusual frame design. Secondly, the plate that sits at the top of the base bar’s stem to hide the cables is sitting proud of the base bar itself. Hopefully the mechanics get round to fixing that before stage 1.
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Little and large! TotalEnergies had two different handlebar options, and they couldn’t be more different.
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The front end of Remco Evenepoel’s new Specialized Tarmac SL9, with his Olympic champion gold colourway, looks really smart.
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The new Bianchi Specialissima is a smart-looking machine, and this dark green colourway was really subtle in certain light…
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…but it popped into this stunning shimmering flake in the sun.
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I also have a lot of time for Movistar’s new paint scheme.
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“Assemble Before Flight” – this is a nice touch on the DT Swiss disc wheels used by the Uno X team.
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This TGale TT saddle is a cool-looking thing, and it pops nicely in this photo against the yellow of the Visma Lease a Bike bus.
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Visma goes through the effort of adding a little 3D-printed bung into the hole on the back of the seatpost sliding rail. Presumably a marginal aero win.
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I also really like the addition of the component weight on this mono riser and TT extensions.
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Another thing I really like is the team’s newfound attention to detail, and this simple but neat method of improving aerodynamic performance. This bolt isn’t ideally placed, so the team has stuck a small circle of tape over it. It’s the perfect size to cover the hole with no unnecessary extra.
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The same can be found here, with the saddle clamp adjustment dial, which sits behind this well-shaped sticker.
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This one’s a little more arbitrary, with a simple strip of what I assume is electrical tape, but it’s enough to hide the hex bolts that hold this aero WolfTooth chain catcher in place.
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We found the same on Pogačar’s seatpost clamp bolt too; this is another very neat touch.
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The rear derailleur on Josh Tarling’s time trial bike had the hole in the rear mech arm taped over.
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Tim Merlier went another route by snapping his off! Of course, this wasn’t intentional, and it was about to be replaced.
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And Filippo Ganna even had the chainring spider bolts taped, although the excess material here feels a little counterproductive.
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This one at Cofidis was also a little counterproductive. Taping up the mount only to then bolt another one to the underside. This is presumably because the original position made it hard to quickly glance down and see when the rider’s hands were in position.
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TotalEnergies was getting in on the tape-over-holes action too. This is over the top tube bento box mount holes on their time trial bike.
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Likewise, Uno-X, whose time trial bike had this underneath the base bar.
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While we’re on Uno-X briefly, I had a lot of time for these low-profile bottle cage bolts.
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Likewise, this 3D-printed out-front mount is complete with Uno X branding incorporated into the design.
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Perhaps my favourite tape-over-hole hack, though, was this duo from Visma Lease a Bike. First, the hole on the SRAM Red AXS chainset is quite large and presumably quite draggy. Not anymore it isn’t.
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And second, the inner face of the pedal axle is another hole that presumably catches more air than you’d want at the pinnacle of time trials. Jonas Vingegaard’s team has clearly put a lot of effort into his bike setup.
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Tape has many uses, of course, and this is probably more a bodge than a hack. My guess is that the tape unravelled mid-training ride and was ripped off, then taped up as a get-home solution.
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To briefly jump back to TotalEnergies, here’s an amusing find. This sticker is on the seat tube of their prototype frame Litening frame. I’m no expert, but I don’t think that’s a fork.
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Another amusing find: Most teams simply set out their bottles on a table before filling them all with water. At Lidl-Trek, that’s not possible because the bottles don’t stand up on their own. Instead, SRAM supplied dozens of these folding bottle carriers. The folding action helps with the bottles’ lean, but the carry handle was quickly nixed.
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More Lidl-Trek for a moment. The team is racing aboard this really eye-catching paint job, which celebrates Trek’s 50th anniversary.
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We’re told that each of the squares represents a point in Trek’s history, and that all of the pre-orders for the frames being made available to the public are unfortunately sold.
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And while we’re at Lidl-Trek, check out the new hubs they’re rocking. These Tactic hubs are a £1000+ upgrade per bike and help drop some weight.
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They’ve also added new aero chain catchers from Leap Components. I really like that they specify what size chainrings they can be used with.
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I was surprised to see the €559 SRM X-Power pedals, which were designed in conjunction with Q36.5 shoes. Their headline figure, besides the high price, is the 9.7mm stack height, including the cleat.
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They’ve also been reading Alex Dowsett’s playbook and have introduced a different coloured strip on each time trial bike to make it easier for each rider to know where to slot back into the line when they’re riding at max heart rate.
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They also had a clever jig, which is designed to enable teams to perfectly align riders’ cleats. A real step up from the Ergon tool that I have at home.
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And to wrap up our time at Lidl-Trek, just take a moment to appreciate the neatness of this mechanic’s tool layout.
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As has probably become clear, I really like acts of attention to small details, and this one is a good example of that. The seatpost dust cover on the Wilier Filante SLR has been replaced with one that also incorporates a race number holder. That’s really cool.
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Another neat find was this Schwalbe Clik tubeless valve. I really like the two-part nut that holds it against the rim.
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I’d also not seen these Topeak valves in person before I spotted this on Biniam Girmay’s bike. They looked quite smart.
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Speaking of Girmay’s bike, the team unveiled this new paint scheme earlier in the week.
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I found a few other neat things at NSN. Not least this bike for team owner and footballing sensation, Andrés Iniesta.
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This was inside the team NSN Team mechanics’ truck. The mechanic told me that they regularly have to set up riders’ groupset configurations and how they pair with Hammerhead computers. This sheet helps them remember who wants what.
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This checklist was nearby too, helping mechanics in the pre-race chaos.
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I also saw this Selle Italia Watt triathlon saddle at the NSN hotel. The addition of 3D-printed lattice material on the underside is an unusual touch.
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Over at Picnic PostNL, one of their workstands was upgraded with the best quick-release lever in all of cycling.
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At Ineos, there were a few new-to-market products on show. First, this Scope Trispoke, which the Dutch brand released just this week.
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And second, these helmets from KASK are new too. The details remain scarce but we’ll do some digging over the next few days to try and find out more.
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Another new helmet is this one from POC, the apparent heir to the Tempor throne. I was allowed to pick it up and was amazed by how light it was. I’m told it’s in the region of 350g.
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This is a curious one on Tadej Pogačar’s time trial bike. Shimano’s base bar Di2 brake lever/shifter comes with a single shift button on either side, and relies on ‘Synchronised Shift’ to change the front mech. Pro riders prefer to have the choice when to shift, though, so it’s common to add a second ‘satellite’ shifter. However, Pogačar’s bike was set up 1X, so these added shifters are just added weight at this point. Does it mean he’ll actually run 2x on race day? We’ll have to wait and see.
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Pogačar’s bike was otherwise outfitted with a full package of titanium from Carbon-Ti, including the thru-axle and derailleur hanger seen here.
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He was also kitted out with this so-called aero-threaded bottom bracket from Bikone. The aero-ness comes from its completely smooth shell, where most have splines or ridges to allow a tool to grasp it.
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Speaking of aero, the most aero rider in the world (unproven but widely claimed) has a new bike and a new front wheel, as Specialized’s Shiv TT is getting an upgrade.
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I also really like how these extensions look. The shape just somehow looks better than everyone else’s. Spot the customised grips too.
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I also really liked these changeout jerseys that Matteo Jorgensen and Victor Campenaerts wore at the team’s presentation. They’re part of a collaboration between Nimbl and Nike, which also includes a pair of €650 shoes.
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A trio of tech from Tom Pidcock now: First, a fairly common sight in the WorldTour now, but he was the only rider on his team to use the Leap Components aero out-front computer mount.
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Second, the team has clearly borrowed the race transponder hack that we first saw being used by Ineos a couple of seasons ago. It places the transponder behind this fork tab, hiding it in the wake behind the fork rather than taping it to the side, where it adds more aero drag.
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And third, he has his name on his wheels, but perhaps more interesting than that is that he’s using Vittoria’s TPU inner tubes, rather than setting up his tyres tubeless.
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We got to spend some time with the new Van Rysel bike of the French hope, Paul Seixas. We’ll bring you a fuller gallery in the coming days, but my initial takeaway is that it looked really unfinished. The stickers were already beginning to peel away, and the seatpost clamp was left exposed. It’s only a prototype bike, of course, but I’d expect more from a team with such a prodigious rider with a realistic chance of a podium on his first outing.
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A lot of effort had gone into the setups at Caja Rural. For example, Bikone had supplied new pulley wheels for their Dura-Ace derailleurs; they had bling KMC chains, and although not shown here, bikes were fitted with lighter-weight Overfast thru axles.
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There was also a prototype bike from their sponsor, MMR, at the hotel. We were told that it wasn’t yet approved by the UCI, so it wouldn’t be used in the race, but Fernando Gaviria had been out training on it earlier in the day.
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In the same hotel, Alpecin were unusually cagey about their time trial bikes, despite not being the new Speedmax that has broken cover at the Challenge Roth triathlon this weekend. They had Scope wheels with Shimano branding (as we’ve seen already this year), Wahoo Speed sensors on their hubs to help riders keep pace more smoothly, and they’d done similar to Lidl-Trek, with different coloured stickers for each bike. Here, though, you can see new Dura-Ace logos under this black tape on the wheels, which on closer inspection were labelled as WH-R9370.
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Mathieu van der Poel’s bike here, and there’s a real classic aesthetic to the drop profile of his new handlebars.
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Van der Poel has long been a traditionalist when it comes to tech. He stuck with 44cm handlebars long after his teammates and the rest of the peloton went to narrower options, but you can see here that he’s finally caught up, and these are listed as 350mm. Right on the UCI limit.
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I found these time trial extensions to be quite funny. It appears the mechanics have stuck on some microfibre cloth using a Velcro base, presumably to add a bit of comfort and some sweat-wicking grip to the forearms.
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And in a slight juxtaposition, these Speedbar extensions are really well finished, with a perfectly shaped cut-out for the shifters.