- I'm a bike and tech nerd, and one of my
absolute favourite things to do at races
like the Tour de France, is to look around
the team mechanic's truck.
We haven't checked this one out yet.
It is, believe it or not, the Bahrain-Merida team truck,
one of the newer trucks,
some of the newer equipment.
Let's take a look.
(relaxed jazz music)
We're two days out from the Tour de France,
and the mechanics are super busy.
We're gonna try not to get in their way;
I'm sure I will get in their way though.
Let's have a look.
Here we go; the Bahrain-Merida team mechanic's truck.
Let's mix things up a bit, go right to the back
and then work our way back out here.
Starting out at the top of the back
of the team mechanic's truck, we've got
a load of brand-new tubular tyres.
The mechanics need potentially hundreds of them,
on a race like the Tour de France,
and these are super fresh.
They've not even got a layer of glue on,
so what the mechanics like to do with tubs
is they like to put a couple of layers of glue
on the base tape, stretch them on an old wheel
or an old rim, which means that they're really easy
to change the evening after a stage.
These ones don't even have a layer of glue on 'em;
you can see that from the clean base tapes
on those Continental Competition ALX Pro
25mm tubular tyres.
And, looking at this, the whole team,
every pair of wheels in here is a pair of tubular wheels.
As the main purpose of the team mechanic's trucks
is to transport the bikes safely and securely,
it's no surprise to see a tonne of spots for bikes.
I'm gonna count them in a second.
At the moment, the riders are out
on a pre-Tour de France training ride,
so that's why there are a few missing here.
But, we can see that they've also got,
as well as all the rack space, they've got
their charging ports set up.
And this is pretty cool; I don't think
I've ever seen this, usually what you see,
you know, the mechanic's trucks are all
plugged into generators, and you'll see
a standard plug socket for them to charge
their Dura-Ace Di2 batteries.
Bahrain-Merida have upped it, in my view,
'cause they've got USB sockets, so I mean,
that's cool, that's super prepared.
And, for the bike count, we've got
one, two,
38, I think; 38 or 40 bikes
can fit in this truck.
I think this truck is mainly gonna be used
to transport the road bikes; there is one
time trial bike here,
that's Tsgabu Grmay's Merida Warp TT bike.
But, for the most part, road bikes only here.
So we've got the Merida Reacto here,
there are new Merida Reactos knocking around at the moment.
I think they're all being used by the riders.
We've got Ondrej Cink's Merida Scultura,
Cink, a former mountain bike pro, of course.
There's probably 50 or so pairs of wheels in here,
so more pairs of wheels than there are bikes.
And that's because a team, for a race
like Tour de France, needs to travel
with a absolutely huge range of wheels.
So, from this side, they've got their
Fulcrum 40Ts, so that's probably one of the lightest
wheels they'll be racing, probably something
that the lighter guys will use on most stages,
and every rider will use on the mountain stages.
Moving towards the middle, we've got the 55T,
so it's like a mid-section wheel,
something that many riders will use
on most intermediate and flatter days.
And then, right the way towards the back here,
things get really deep, 'cause we've got
the 80mm wheels here.
So they are the super-aero ones,
something for the sprinters,
something for the front wheel on the time trial maybe.
And they also have a range of cassettes,
and the cassettes are appropriate per wheel set.
So the lighter wheels may have larger cassettes on,
the deeper section wheels may have
slightly smaller cassettes on.
Now for the drawers.
So, PAK, I don't know what that means,
but I do know how to open it.
This is handlebars, so we've got,
you can see, the team have got their Vision
carbon fibre handlebars here.
40cm wide, it's a quite narrow set.
Very cool.
So next up, I actually do know what this one means,
this is "Selle", so this is saddles.
Crack that open; we've got a whole load
of Prologo saddles set up.
This one's even set up on an FSA seat post,
both brand-new.
And more different saddles here.
So they've got plenty of spares, just for the race.
And, we sneak a look here,
that one right there is an unbranded
Fizik Antares saddle, for team leader
Vincenzo Nibali, who isn't here.
From saddles to (speaking in foreign language)
no idea, no idea.
Possibly seat posts.
It's seat posts, I was right.
So, because the team are using Merida Reactos,
which are an aerodynamic bike,
they've got their own aero seat pins,
and they've also pre-installed their Dura-Ace batteries,
which is a very smart thing to do.
Time-saving.
We're gonna look at this.
This is incredibly cool; so this
is something that Mattia, so one of the
head mechanics here, at Bahrain-Merida
looks to have made, specifically for him,
and it is designed so that the riders
can get their Shimano Dura-Ace cleats
perfectly positioned, and this,
this is so cool; I've never seen anything like this.
You've got a carbon fibre thing there,
so carbon fibre, Dura-Ace pedals pre-fitted,
get your cleat position nailed,
'cause it's nearly impossible to do
if you're just doing it by sight or on your shoes.
Now it's time for the really exciting drawers.
This is where all the very cool, little stuff hangs out.
First up, I promised cool little stuff; I lied.
This is a load of Dura-Ace Di2 stuff.
There is a lot of it.
I mean, this drawer alone is definitely not cheap,
but it's where they keep the chargers, the mechs,
and the shifters.
Drawer two, let's go.
FSA stems, that's a big one.
15-centimeters.
Cables.
So, we've got a KMC chain there, hanging around;
we've got espresso cups, hugely important.
I've not seen a coffee machine yet.
And then we've got cables, and
I actually don't know what, those are Shimano cables.
I think they must be the new Shimano cables,
they've got some sort of coating on them.
Cleats, and,
so we've got cleat spacers, clearly they do,
you know, based on the tour, the top
like to get cleat position absolutely nailed.
And then you've got the custom bottle cages.
Let's see if I can fish one out
without breaking one of them.
So, you've got red and gold, which are the team colours,
the Bahrain-Merida team colours.
Spare cleats, of course;
yellow, red, and blue.
And, these, just to make sure any riders
who have slight leg length discrepancies
just get their cleat positions absolutely nailed.
Right, so there we go, that is a tour
of the Bahrain-Merida team truck.
Huge thanks to the team and the mechanics
for actually letting us look around there,
a couple of days before the Tour de France.
It's a little bit awkward,
I think we took up a bit of their time.
But I absolutely loved looking around there.
I hope you did to; let us know
your thoughts, down in the comments.
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