Spotted: New Scott time trial bike ridden by Romain Bardet at Giro d'Italia

On stage 2 of the Giro d'Italia, Romain Bardet put in one of his strongest time trials to date, finishing 24 seconds down on the winner, Simon Yates. While his performance was certainly noticed, Scott's brand-new contender for the best time trial bikes managed to fly under the radar. 

Overshadowed by Mathieu Van der Poel's bright pink Canyon Speedmax CFR and Yates' mega-expensive skinsuit, not many people noticed that the Frenchman was aboard an as-yet-unreleased time trial bike from his Team DSM bike sponsor, Scott. 

The bike, which looks like it'll replace the brand's Plasma 5, is the latest in a string of new time trial bikes to hit the mainstream media. There have now been four in the past week, after BMC showed off the new Speedmachine it made in collaboration with Red Bull Advanced Technologies, Colnago unveiled its wild-looking new TT1, and Wilier launched the Turbine SLR climbing TT bike. 

Bardet wasn't the only rider aboard the new looking machine, though; Thymen Arensman also piloted the new bike to an even more impressive top 10, but other riders on the team, including Martijn Tusveld, were aboard the older Plasma 5. 

The projected model name of the new bike is not currently known. Scott's existing time trial bike is called the Plasma 5, but there is also a Plasma 6 in the range, which currently only exists as a triathlon-specific bike complete with integrated hydration and UCI-illegal fairings. The bike ridden by Bardet and Tusveld bears significant differences to both.

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Most notably, as shown in the above comparison between old and new, the seat tube and seatstay junction has been reformed, and the deeper section-triangles that wrap around the rear tyre and connect the seat tube to the top tube have been replaced with a more simplified tube shape. Both the fork and the down tube appear to be deeper in profile too, and the head tube has been reshaped with a horizontal ridge that flows into the down tube. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bike is equipped with disc brakes, and we'd hazard a guess that it will be exclusively committed to discs given the bike design trend in that direction. Both Bardet and Tusveld ran the bike with Shimano's new Dura-Ace R9200 C60 front wheel, along with a rear disc wheel also from Shimano. Both were set up tubeless using Vittoria Corsa Speed tyres.

Also unsurprising is the current lack of information regarding the pricing and availability of the bike. We've reached out to Scott Sports for details and will update this story with any information we obtain.