Sure, the Vuelta a España is serving up a fascinating battle, as it does every year, thanks to being a mix of the pinnacle of some rider’s season, and a last chance saloon for grand tour riders who had other duties at the Tour de France or the Giro d’Italia. Jumbo-Visma rocked up with three leaders, and at the time of writing are leading the race with Sepp Kuss, and Soudal-Quickstep are bravely fighting to try and wrestle the red jersey for themselves with Remco Evenepoel, at once a time trial specialist, classics prodigy, week-long stage racer and grand tour specialist.
With this as a backdrop it’s easy to miss the new tech that has, as usual, flown slightly under the radar. The Tour de France, and the races leading up to it like the Critérium du Dauphiné, tend to hoover up the lion’s share of the new tech releases, as it’s the shining beacon in the sports calendar and so ensures maximum coverage. The problem is that there are so many new releases it all becomes a bit of a noisy landscape, so some brands sensibly opt to trickle new things into the final grand tour of the year. At the Vuelta, we’ve spotted, amongst other things, a brand new Bianchi between the legs of Arkea-Samsic‘s Kévin Vauquelin, a fresh new lack-of-paint paintjob for Remco Evenepoel’s new Specialized Tarmac SL8, and a number of pros opting for classic round bars despite the aero drawbacks.
The talk of the town is this new Bianchi that seems to be following the trend of all-rounder race bikes, rather than being a climbing or aero specific option
The front end looks to be sculpted like an aero bike, with the forks flowing into the headtube to shape the wind
The upward kink in the toptube follows a similar design language to the aero Oltre RC, but with a more severe angle
A zero-degree stem, rather than one with a negative angle so as to appear horizontal, is unusual still. It could be that the bike comes with a relatively short head tube to make the frame weight lower.
At the rear end, much like the new Specialized Tarmac SL8, the stays are tiny to save weight
It wouldn’t be a Bianchi without some flashes of the trademark Celeste green
The Arkea mechanics decided against wrapping the bars to the built in ridge, cutting the tape off perpendicular instead
The section of butyl inner…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…