The 2017 season saw a raft of changes in the WorldTour bikes line-up. With two teams having folded, a new one born, and a Pro Continental team having stepped to the WorldTour, change was inevitable.
New tech and paint jobs graced the peloton, with Argon 18 moving to Astana, Colnago partnering with UAE Abu Dhabi (formerly Lampre-Merida), and Factor Bikes making their WorldTour debut with AG2R La Mondiale.
Peter Sagan's move to Bora-Hansgrohe gave the team enough WorldTour points on his own to promote the team to WorldTour status, although Sagan was not the only headline signing for the team. Specialized partnered with Bora-Hansgrohe for the 2017 season and beyond, and we saw custom painted, glittering-rainbow frames underneath the world champion.
The end of Argon18's partnership with the Bora team did not result in a WorldTour omission for the Canadian brand. Announcing a partnership with WorldTour team Astana for three seasons, the Kazakh outfit rode aboard the Gallium Pro, Nitrogen Pro and E-118 Next time trial bike.
2017 was also the first foray in the WorldTour ranks for Factor Bikes after a season with Pro Continental team, ONE Pro Cycling. Colnago also re-joined the WorldTour ranks with UAE Abu Dhabi after a one-year hiatus following the demotion of Europcar at the end of 2016.
Tony Martin, the individual time trial world champion, wore the rainbow jersey aboard the Canyon Speedmax having moved to Katusha-Alpecin. Canyon also stuck with Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana at Movistar.
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Cyclingnews put together a table of all the bike manufactures, models, wheels, and components the WorldTour teams used in 2017, which can be seen below. For the cobbled classics there were slight changes in terms of which bike models certain teams used, with more forgiving endurance options available. However, Mat Hayman famously won the 2016 Paris-Roubaix on the aero Scott Foil. Further to that, the UCI introduced a second disc brake trial with 'rounded' discs to add even more variety to the 2017 WorldTour bike fleet.
At the season openers in Australia and Argentina, many teams were equipped with the existing Shimano Dura-Ace 9070 series groupsets. Although the latest Dura-Ace 9100 series groupset was launched at the 2016 Tour de France, only Team Sky and FDJ were partially using the new groupset. Chris Froome was the first WorldTour rider to race on the full groupset and Shimano 9100 series wheels. Much of the peloton had followed suit by the end of the season.
Cyclingnews was busy throughout the season snapping bikes around the world - all of which can be seen above and below the table.
