Tour Tech 2017: What makes a time trial bike so fast?

This year’s Tour de France opens today with a 14km (8.75 miles) individual time trial in Dusseldorf, Germany, and here’s the type of bike the riders will be racing.

We grabbed the Giant Trinity belonging to Team Sunweb’s Warren Barguil to check out the key differences between a time trial bike and a road bike.

Time trial bikes are all about aerodynamics. The frame tubes are designed to be aero and virtually all come with features like a deep section down tube, a seat tube that’s cutaway around the rear wheel and seatstays that join that seat tube very low down. 

A time trial bike’s geometry is different too. Not only do time trial bikes have a short head tube to keep the front end low, the seat angle is usually steep to help the rider get into a flat-backed riding position. This isn’t necessarily a position they’d be comfortable maintaining all day, but it’s okay for the shorter distances associated with Tour de France stages against the clock.

Electronic shifting allows riders to change gear whether they’re out of the saddle and using the base bar or in their aero tuck with hands on the aero extensions.

The second individual time trial in this year’s Tour de France is in Marseille on the penultimate day – Saturday 22 July (there’s no team time trial this time). Again, it’s a short one at 22.5km (14 miles) but if things are close in the general classification it could be very interesting.