- As I record this, we are on the eve of the Tour de France
which is of course the biggest bike race in the world.
And as such, for the last few days,
myself and Oli have been going geering the teams
in search of the best, the newest and the most custom tech.
Take it away.
- The CCC Team are using some new wheels
at the Tour de France this year.
These are from a new brand called Cadex
and they've got them in two depths.
42 millimeter, like we've get here,
and 65 millimeters as well which we've seen
on the bike of Greg Van Avermaet.
Now, I've got a pair of the 42 millimeter tubes here
and I'm going to weigh them because they feel really light
so I'm going to weigh them complete with the skewers
and also Vittoria Corsa tubular tires
which have been glued on there.
So, first, the front.
Tare my scales.
Place your bets now,
what you think this is going to come in at.
850 grams with a tire
and a skewer in there,
that's really light.
Let's see what they, the rear one's coming out at.
And bear in mind, this rear one does have
a 3011 Dura-Ace cassette on so that will add some weight.
1.12 kilograms for a rear wheel
with a cassette, tire and skewer.
That is impressive.
Well, one of the reasons why I think
these wheels are so light
is they've got these straight through pull carbon spokes.
You can imagine that the riders will like these
being really lightweight but the mechanics probably won't
because they'll probably have to add extra weight
to the bikes now to make them up to the UCI limit.
- I've just been pointed towards this bike
by my friend at Cervelo.
It is Michael Matthew's Cervelo S5.
It doesn't look any different to the standard S5s
that most of the rest of the team are using
but the clue in the difference with this one lies down here.
This small logo, SPT stands for
Silverstone Painting Technology.
Now, paint weights quite a lot
which is why you'll see many climbing bikes
that are bare carbon fiber,
to save as many grams of weight as possible.
However, Silverstone Painting Technology works in Formula 1.
Bike manufacturers often look towards Formula 1
for advantages such as aerodynamics
but also in weight gains and that's what this is all about.
This is a very special type of paint
which I understand saves between 80 and 160 grams
on the various Team Sunweb bikes,
so there's a lot.
The other difference is in the bars.
Again, you can't see it but Michael Matthews
apparently pulls a hell of a lot on his bars,
required some slightly stiffer ones
which is what Cervelo have produced for him.
(calm music)
- The CCC Team has some really hot new aerotech
on their time trial bikes.
Check these wheels out.
They're brand new from the component brand, Cadex,
which is a new brand, and a subsidiary of Giant.
Now, we've got the four spoke at the front
which looks very fast
and this very bling looking techstream covered
full carbon disk at the back.
Both of them are tubulars, they've been developed
using a combination of CFD, computational fluid dynamics,
and also wind tunnel testing at Magny-Cours
to make them as fast as possible.
And it's really cool, these bladed,
well, it's bladed four spoke here,
it's kind of got an aerofoil shape,
so you can feel that it has to go in a certain direction.
It sort of tapers off at the back of the leading edge there.
And they're very wide as well.
The external rim width on this front wheel is coming out
just a touch over 28 millimeters.
Very wide, and chunky indeed.
Its interesting 'cause this is the leading edge of the bike.
And onto these, we've got some Vittoria Corsa speed tires
and these are 25 millimeters,
so it suggests that these new wheels
have been optimized for that tire width,
which is interesting.
Time trial tires in the past have been around 23,
so even time trial tires now are getting wider.
Cool.
- I know you all love a pair of custom kicks.
Some of you will have seen these on the GCN show previously.
These are George Bennett's custom shoes
made for him by his girlfriend Caitlin.
Talk us through them.
- Um, yeah, so they started in the Tour de France,
2017 was their first appear.
My girlfriend's an artist, she moved to Girona
with me, from New Zealand.
And we we're kind of looking for her to do something,
she's a very talented artist,
and one of the things she did was just chuck some stuff
down on my shoes, and people loved them,
and then she started getting like requests
for people to, you know how do they buy them.
And so, it kind of started off as a small business idea,
and in the last maybe 12 months its gone really big,
and she's uh, I'm one of many pro riders riding
customized shoes in the peloton.
- [Interviewer] Has she got less time to spend on your shoes
now she's doing so many others.
- Yeah, it is a problem for me you know?
Like, it was great when no one knew her really,
you know, I could sort of get 30 hours done on my shoes,
and now, I ask for a new pair of shoes
and she kind of uh, goes bugger off, you know?
- Got to put your order in for 2020 right now.
- Now I got to start paying her.
- Explain the little bump on the side here.
- Oh, so that there is a for toe number six.
If you can see my foot.
I think it originated from years of playing rugby
staying on the, I was a flanker.
And I always got stood on on the side of the scrum.
And it just was on tight boots
it just got irritated and irritated,
and a little bone growth started spurring out.
Yeah I mean its such a shame to, on such a good you know,
nice pair of art to put a big glump there,
but it still looks all right.
- Well thanks for your time, - Yeah.
- Good luck on your next three weeks.
- Thank you, thanks for having us, cheers.
- This is not new tech by any stretch of the imagination
because these wheels from Fast Forward
came out in 2017.
But I just had to show you them,
because they struck me as I walked past
the Arkea-Samsic truck.
Plenty of tri-spokes of course out there in the world
of time trialing, but it's very rare, still to this day,
that you see a mono-spoke like this.
Disk equipped on this particular model.
They claim, Fast Forward, that these M5 wheels
actually produce forward thrust in certain wind conditions.
And actually independent tests
have shown it to be very fast indeed.
Certainly look the part.
- I'm over at Movistar, and I've got some hot tire tech
for you, now Movistar are one of a continental
sponsored teams here at the Tour.
And in the time trial, they're running a new tire.
And it's a clincher because the theory is,
that clinchers, despite being slightly heavier
than tubulars, offer a performance benefit
with superior rolling resistance,
and superior aerodynamics.
Now this tire in question is a new one,
let's spin it around.
It's the Grand Prix TT Pro Limited.
23 millimeters wide, and it's got this special
low rolling 111 compound on it.
And that's paired interestingly with the tread pattern
from a GP 4,000.
Now the reason for that is that they found by accident
that the tread pattern from the 4,000
happens to be really aerodynamic.
That's why it's there.
Oh, and another cool thing is continental is offering this
tire with different colors on the side walls.
So they can be matched to the team colors,
Katusha has apparently got some red ones.
So, keep an eye out for that.
And down here we've got the bike of world champion
Alejandro Valverde.
And this is cool because he has got
the new Competition Pro Limited's from Continental
on his race bike.
This is an updated version of the previous one.
We saw it at the Giros,
but I've spoken to Continental
and I found out some interesting things.
This tire was first used when Valverde won the Worlds.
And that's significant because they've told me
that it's 50 grams lighter per tire
than the previous Pro Limited.
Which means, you can save 100 grams
on the overall bike weight,
and that's perhaps why Valverde's now riding
the Aero.
Because well, it means he can get it down to the UCI limit
of 6.8.
The new tire also has a 200 TPI carcass which means
a lower rolling resistance than before,
and overall, on top of it, the pros love it.
- I've just bumped into Steve Smith of Castelli
who's come up with a few goodie bags
for the riders here at team Ineos.
And amongst those goodies is a pair of bib shorts,
which he's coined the Dan loyd Bib Shorts,
believe it or not.
There's a good reason for that,
it's 'cause I used to crash a lot.
But you better explain what these are all about.
- Yeah, so Dan, back in your Cervelo TestTeam days
you had kind of rough flesh all the time on this side.
I never could figure it out, 'cause you're up there,
you're above everybody so you could see what's coming.
But then somehow you're on the ground.
- I just wasn't very good at bike handling basically.
- Okay, but anyways so we did these shorts
for you back in the day where we put two panels here
on the side, and it seemed to help.
- [Dan] Yep.
- And so the yeah, the evolution of this
we now do this for some of the team Ineos riders
here for the first week of the Tour de France.
They'll only use these on these first flat stages
they're dangerous.
Actually it's kind of funny,
the first time we did this for team Sky rider
was for Froome with the start in Germany.
And talking with him is like,
should we do it on the back panel,
and he was like of course not, you never fall on your back.
So we just did it on the side panels,
and then that first, or the second stage,
they go through that round about and there he is
sliding on his back and ripped his shorts up.
But anyway, we have evolved a little bit
from your era.
And now on the inside there's actually
a Dyneema reinforced fabric,
so, it was actually still the Lycron, Lycra.
The reason we do that is you know,
from track racing days where you wear two pairs of shorts.
When you fall and the head of your femur
kind of presses against the ground,
you got a lot of pressure just on one point,
and Lycra, just one layer of Lycra,
will really kind of grip the pavement in the beginning,
and so that sheer force has to go somewhere,
and so it's always ended up kind of in the fleshy part
of your side, but Lycron Lycra, that first hit,
the two layers of Lycra can slide against each other
and then, as a back up to keep everything
from ripping apart, we use a Dyneema on the second layer.
- Okay, well let's hope that they don't crash
in those opening days at the tour,
but if they do, they've got an extra layer of protection.
- Yeah.
- Got some custom shoes next to me now.
These are Andre Greipel's custom Gaerne's
where he's got the gorilla graphic on the side,
a list of some of his biggest stage wins here
at the Tour de France as well.
As well as his family's names here,
and the German flag printed on the side,
and also on the boa's, which is pretty cool.
And he's kindly let me stand next to him for all of that.
Well it is now seven p.m.
the day before the Tour de France starts,
and the mechanics of team Sunweb and Katusha Aspecin
behind me are still hard at work measuring up bikes,
gluing on fresh tubulars.
It almost never stops for them.
Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this video
looking at some of the best new tech
here at the Tour de France.
If you have, please press on the thumbs up icon
just down below.
And we have more videos for you, all about tech,
you can find one of those just over here.