It only feels like yesterday that we were bringing you tech content from Paris-Roubaix, but the Tour de France is officially upon us and I've been in Florence for three days, racing from team hotel to team hotel, much like the Netflix crew I bumped into on Thursday who were fitting GoPros to a dozen teams's cars.
I won't list them all, but some of the highlights include the UAE hotel, where I saw Tadej Pogačar's Colnago V4Rs with a few new techy tricks hidden in plain sight; the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale hotel, where an all-new Van Rysel aero bike was spotted, of which there are a handful of close-up detail shots below.
I also went to Visma-Lease a Bike, where I got a look inside their controversial new 'Control Room', as well as a closer look at Jonas Vingegaard's bike. That too had some tricks up its sleeve, but they were hidden. You'll have to read on to find out what they were.
I also spent time at Team DSM-Firmenich-PostNL, where I got a look at their new race radios, which are mounted inside their time trial helmets, rather than in a pocket on their back.
Thursday night played host to the Teams' Presentation at the Pallazo Vecchio in the centre of Florence. In the large quarters behind the First Courtyard, within the Pallazo itself, each of the teams' bikes were stored, waiting for the riders to do their lap of the city centre. I spent most of my evening there - a bike nerd's heaven - getting up close with the bikes.
All in, I took well over a thousand photos and narrowed it down to around 350 good ones. I've cut that down further, and have landed on 86 photos of the fanciest, nerdiest, newest tech from the 2024 Tour de France.
Let's start with the new Van Rysel aero bike. Enjoy.
The new Van Rysel bike, spotted in the days leading up to the race, is unashamedly aero in its design
It appears to be called the FCR Pro, and will join the RCR all-rounder road bike in the range
I doubt Van Rysel is trying to one-up Cannondale's Hi-Mod with this Super Hi Mod carbon, but I like to think it is. Like the brand's wheels, it appears SwissSide were involved in designing this too
The frame's seat tube hugs the rear tyre, but with enough of a gap for decent size tyres
The chunky down tube leads into a beefy bottom bracket area, presumably for maximum sprinting stiffness.
Tyre clearance up front looks pretty sizeable too.
The marble-effect paintwork, presumably used in a bid to disguise some of the bike's lines and features, is a convenient nod to Florence's Romanesque architecture.
If you were unsure about the aero intentions, this is all you need to see. This head tube is enormous and is reminiscent of the Dare bike that Uno-X have been riding this season.
The one-piece handlebar is also new, and while not as deep as the Uno-X Mobility bike, it's definitely still one of the deepest in the WorldTour.
Here's an alternative look.
The seatstays travel diagonally as you'd expect, but drop vertically at the last.
The formula F = 0.5 S V^2 Cx relates to the aerodynamic drag force experienced by an object moving through a fluid (such as air). Here's a breakdown of the terms in the formula:
F: Aerodynamic drag force
ρ (often represented as p): Fluid density (e.g., air density)
S: Reference area (frontal area of the object facing the flow)
V: Velocity of the object relative to the fluid
Cx: (often represented as Cd): Drag coefficient, which characterizes the drag per unit area
The fork blades are also pretty deep.
A green strip travels down the rear of the frame, with the Van Rysel wordmark cut out.
This is currently a prototype bike, so we don't know for sure what it'll be called.
The Deda bars come with profiled spacers to create a really deep junction beneath the stem. This will hopefully create plenty of space for cable routing, in what look to be fully integrated bars.
The Lion of Flanders features on the front of the seat tube, alongside a note that says "Designed in Flanders."
The seatstays join in a fairly conventional place, flaring outwards more than most before heading down to the rear axle. The seatpost clamp is a wedge style, accessed from in front of the seatpost itself.
Here's what it looks like under the cover.
There's no 'speed sniffer' style forward protrusion here, but the head tube is more than deep enough.
It was also fitted with those unusual Continental Aero 111 tyres, as spotted at the Team Presentation.
Speaking of new things, here's an unusual one from over at Lidl-Trek. It's from a company called Cyclowax and it automatically waxes a bike's chain, without the need to remove it from the bike. It takes 30 minutes per bike, so rather than spend all night between each stage waxing chains, the team has pre-waxed 40 spare chains.
Accompanying the machine was this Cleaning Station and Waxing Station.
Another new find was this helmet at Intermarché-Wanty 2024. It's from Uvex, and the name is unknown. Louis Meintjes talked me through the helmet, saying that it had a removable cover that switches it from a vented helmet as shown here, to an aero helmet as shown below. However, due to the UCI rule forbidding covers on helmets, the team was forced to superglue it into place. This in turn meant they needed to bring twice as many helmets to the race.
Here, modelled excellently by Biniam Girmay, is the same helmet but with the cover fitted.
Speaking of helmets, there's an interesting chain of thought happening at DSM-Firmenich PostNL...
It involves placing the race radio into the helmet, rather than against the chest or back. This is primarily a safety concern, but there's another nifty point to it.
This little dot is the microphone, and instead of reaching for a button on the chest or in the helmet to turn it on, the riders can use their Di2 buttons on their Shimano groupsets. Meanwhile, the DS has a Bluetooth button mounted onto the steering wheel in the car, meaning they can speak to the team without taking their hand off the wheel.
So far, it's only been put into the time trial helmet, because the signal can currently only travel in the direction the antenna is pointing, rather than 360. It also isn't strong enough to reach all riders when races are split into different groups. It's a really interesting idea though, from a company called Sena, and if it helps to increase safety, I'm rooting for its success.
On the subject of innovation, we got a look inside Visma-Lease a Bike's controversial new control room, where they can monitor the race situation from afar and make tactical decisions that the DS in the team car might not be able to see.
While the Control Centre is anything but subtle, the other tech find at Visma is as subtle as they come. Hidden inside the hubs - the DT180, here on Jonas Vingegaard's bike, and the DT240 used on some other riders' bikes - are a new set of high-precision bearings. They're from the Japanese brand Jtekt, and they tested around 2-3 watts faster than the already-good standard bearings from DT Swiss.
There were also a handful of new bikes on show. We already spotted the new Canyon Aeroad at the Dauphiné, but I managed to get up close with both the bike of Jasper Philipsen...
...and Mathieu Van der Poel, both of whom had a different paint job to the rest of their team. Stay tuned for a full closer bike check of the as-yet-unreleased Canyon Aeroad CFR.
Visma-Lease a Bike are also sporting custom paint, as shown here on Jonas Vingegaard's Cervélo R5. It weighs 6.7kg as you see it, so should be 'legal' once the race number and GPS transponder are fitted.
Mark Cavendish's Wilier Filante SLR is also custom-painted in this multi-coloured splash, a design which continues into the colour-matched one-piece bar/stem.
The most anticipated new bike design of the race has to be the new Specialized Tarmac SL8 bikes of the newly-titled Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. The bike was made available to the public in a limited run of 500 units for the princely sum of $16,500. Within 24 hours, Specialized had sold out entirely.
While we're on the subject of S-Works Tarmacs, I couldn't leave out Remco Evenepoel's bike. He's been using this design for a few weeks already, but it looks great with the chrome-matched handlebar.
Another bike that's not new, but looks great, is the SuperSix Evo of Nielson Powless. Incredibly, the bike as you see it weighed 7.8kg, a full kilogram heavier over the UCI limit, with the race number and GPS transponder still to be fitted.
Tadej Pogačar's bike was lighter, at 7.2kg, but that's despite switching out standard components for a handful of fancy lightweight tech from Absolute Black and Carbon Ti.
Among the new additions is this derailleur hanger from Frames And Gear. Presumably a weight saving measure.
These are also new. They're the GraphenPads from AbsoluteBlack, and feature huge zig-zag fins for heat dissipation.
This one isn't new, but the Carbon Ti chainrings are still being used to bring the weight of the V4Rs down.
I also spotted two of the UAE Team's Colnagos built with an unusual spec. Despite being sponsored by Shimano and Enve, these two were built up with SRAM groupsets and Zipp wheels. They were staff bikes, rather than rider bikes, so perhaps it was more a personal preference, or perhaps they're considering a change. The latter seems unlikely given both Enve and Shimano were chosen by the team after extensive testing.
Speaking of non-standard specs, the cockpit on Tom Pidcock's Pinarello Dogma F is different to the rest of the team.
See how the edges of the stem have a sharper angle here on Ben Turner's bike, while on Pidcock's there's more of a gradual curve.
There are differences on the underside too. The underside of Turner's bike is totally solid, apart from the mount for the out-front computer mount.
While on Pidcock's bike, there is a removable cover. It looks as though Pinarello has taken the cockpit from the old Dogma F and moulded it to fit the new frame.
You've probably also noticed that interesting out-front mount. It's currently a team-only prototype from Pinarello's component subsidiary, MOST, and it's 3D printed. There are different designs to fit the different sizes of Garmin Edge computer.
There was another case of non-standard componentry at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, where Jai Hindley's bike was fitted with a blacked-out Fizik saddle, rather than the team-sponsored Specialized saddles.
Speaking of Fizik saddles, at Visma-Lease a Bike, Christophe Laporte was using the brand's new 'One to One' custom fitting service. He'd had it applied to the brand's Antares model. That was just one of a few interesting small tech tidbits I found at Visma, so I'll run through those now.
These Tacx Deva bottle cages are devoid of any paint or gloss clearcoat. They're raw carbon, because that's marginally lighter.
You can't help but feel impressed by the attention to detail from this team. They had even covered over the small bolt holes on the new Vision Metron 5D Evo bar for the tiny aero benefit it provides.
Amusingly, on the front of that Vision bar, they've added a white sticker over the existing black Vision logo, as a way to show the Vision brand off to the world more clearly. Marketing at its finest. And probably undone the weight saving found on those bottle cages.
Vision stickers were also applied to Nielson Powless' cockpit, despite it not being made by Vision at all. It's actually the SystemBar R-One from Momo Design, which comes as standard with the SuperSix Evo Lab71 bikes.
Things are not all as they seem here at Astana, either. Despite Wilier making a cockpit for the Filante, this bike was fitted with a Black Inc cockpit, painted up to match the rest of the bike.
I can't do a section on handlebars without including this monster of a thing. It's not the first time we've seen it. It first broke cover at the Spring Classics, alongside a new Dare bike. It's seriously striking though, and pushes the new UCI rules on dimensions to the limit.
A bit of a subject change here, but I couldn't help but find this ironic. Over at the Israel-Premier Tech hotel, there was a Factor branded Ineos Grenadier, the 4x4 that gives the Ineos Grenadier's their name.
I also enjoyed these Lidl-branded shoes, worn by everyone in the Lidl-Trek camp. Don't say it too loudly, but I might want a pair.
Things you love to see: I didn't manage to get a photo of the Paw Patrol tattoo that Jonas Vingegaard was sporting, but I did see his former teammate, Primož Roglič, with a similar memento.
Some riders choose to remember other things in the moment, while others try to find ways to capture the moment. At the Team's Presentation, one of the Intermarché-Wanty riders was using an Insta360 camera mounted to this stem-mounted selfie stick. I'd love to see the footage he captured.
Now for a look at the small, neat or interesting little updates, hacks and designs. The first is this Red-Bull-colour-appropriate detail on the SRAM Red crank arms.
Next, the small strips of grip tape on the inside of the bottle cages at Ineos Grenadiers. This is more of a common sight at Paris-Roubaix, but with more and more attention turning to nutrition in recent years, anything the team can do to avoid dropping bottles unnecessarily will help performance.
This was also a nice touch, on the underside of Mathieu van der Poel's World Champion's paint job.
This one was slightly less neat, but interesting nonetheless. While most teams bond the race number into place, and some use rubber bands, Cofidis go old school with the good old-fashioned zip tie.
The bike that Pogacar rode at the Teams' Presentation was Colnago's V4Rs Fleur-de-Lys edition. Costing €23,000, it featured this real-gold plaque on the stem.
It also had gold-coloured spokes, because why on earth wouldn't you when spending that much on a bike?
Israel-Premier Tech's Factor's Ostro VAM wasn't quite as bling at that, but it did have a nice custom paint job, complete with holographic logos.
While we're on the subject of custom, Mark Cavendish was wearing a newly-designed pair of his usual Nike shoes.
And while we're on the subject of Cav, we've already seen it, but here are a couple more angles of the custom bike he'll be riding.
I think it looks great, although I'm not sure I could live with the unmatched black stem cap.
Cofidis were also sporting custom designs, with their usual black bikes being swapped out for white.
Groupama FDJ's prodigious youngster, Lenny Martinez, was sporting a different paint job to the rest of his team.
Pogačar's bike wasn't given the custom paint treatment, but it does come with the Hulk sticker on the handlebar that we saw at the Giro d'Italia.
I also quite liked these time trial wheels at Syncros, which featured a shiny blue design that shimmers in the sun.
Speaking of sun, it is set to be a scorching day for Saturday's opening stage, and riders will need plenty of ice packs to keep them cool. Much credit must be given to the mechanics and soigneurs who spent most of Friday afternoon packing ice cubes into stockings ready. The mechanics should get plenty of credit for all they do, in fact, and this next section will be dedicated to them.
Here, Quentin Pacher's tyre was marked up with his initials, along with a date. This is presumably when the tyre sealant was added.
Who needs fancy bottles of branded bike wash? I've no idea what was actually in this bottle, but its was being used to wash the Ineos Grenadiers' bikes.
I'm also unsure why Astana mechanics had a disc rotor alignment tool with Cavendish's name on. Maybe there is no reason, or maybe its specifically used for Cav's bikes. Or maybe it's Cav's own tool. The language barrier proved too much for me to find out.
At each team, the mechanics were hard at work at all times. In some cases, bikes were being built, tubeless tyres were being reset, and bar tape was being wrapped, but in many cases the bikes were just being cleaned.
In this case, one of the Uno X Mobility bikes was having its Di2 charged, and evidently, the power bank used was taken from the 'big truck'.
A fun game I like to play is "can you decipher the mechanics' notes?" In this case, the answer is no. Can you?
One of the joys of a last-minute paint launch is the panicked last-minute stickering of bikes. In this case, one of the SRAM team was on hand to add their mark to the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe bikes.
Speaking of working hard, I bumped into these guys at Astana. They are the team from Netflix, tasked with fitting GoPro cameras into all 13 of the team cars they'll be following. A bit like me, they had 3 days to drive around all of the team hotels.
How to avoid scratching bikes when putting them into stands? Option 1: be careful. Option 2: just add some felt stickers! Innovation at its simplest, but it was no doubt effective.
We're nearly at the end, so if you've got this far, thanks for reading. This van, at Ineos Grenadiers, was specifically carrying an ice bath for the riders. It's currently 33 degrees Celsius in Florence (91 Fahrenheit) so I might go and find it for a dunk.
Or I might go and take a lie down! Thanks for reading. At the time of writing, the race starts in less than four hours! Allez le Tour 🇫🇷
