Is F1 driver Valtteri Bottas riding an unreleased Canyon Aeroad?

It looks like F1 driver Valtteri Bottas is riding around on an unreleased Canyon Aeroad aero road bike, so we could see a big launch this side of the Tour de France.

It’s well known that Finland’s Valtteri Bottas has a passion for cycling and he's an ambassador for both Canyon and SRAM.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Valtteri Bottas (@valtteribottas)

Bottas stuck a picture of himself riding a Canyon on Instagram on Sunday ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix (where he finished 13th). You can't tell a whole lot from that pic – it’s not a great angle for checking out the details – but it does look like the bike is fitted with a new handlebar/stem that’s similar in some respects to the cockpit found on the latest Canyon Grail.

The bar that Bottas is using is a different shape and doesn’t have the same flare to the drops as Canyon's existing CP0039 or CP0047 (which come with a mighty 16° of flare), but it does have a similar ‘Gear Groove’, which is that section at the front of the stem area. The idea of the Gear Groove is that it allows you to mount various Canyon accessories, such as mounts and lights. You can see that Bottas’ bike is fitted with a computer mount there.

The bike was seen elsewhere around Monaco over the weekend and even appeared on Sky Sports’ F1 coverage, with reporter Ted Kravitz taking a quick look as it was pushed past the cars.

Again, the pictures aren’t great – anyone would think they had other things on their mind – but if you scroll to 11:50mins in this video you can have a gander. 

The logos on the top tube show that this is a Canyon Aero CF SLX, which is the top-level platform. In silhouette, Bottas’ bike doesn’t look a million miles from the existing Aeroad, but we reckon there are a few differences here.

Pics: from Sky Sports footage

When we get a view from the back, you can see that the seatstays join together just above the top of the wheel/tyre. There’s no space in the area behind the seat tube anymore. We presume there’s an aero reason for this, although Canyon has yet to give any details.

There’s a pronounced slope at the junction between the seat tube and the top tube. We can’t say for sure if any work has been done in that area.

Other than that, we’re going to hold fire on this one until we get better photos.

The bike comes in a Northern Lights finish, which Bottas already uses on his race helmet. 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Valtteri Bottas (@valtteribottas)

The Stake F1 team member pushing the bike believes this to be a limited edition finish, but he's a bit sketchy on the details, so whether it’ll be available to the public remains to be seen. We don’t even know when the bike will be released yet, but we’d be massively surprised if it didn’t get a full launch ahead of the Tour de France, and that’s just a month away (29th June).

We’ll be keeping ’em peeled between now and then.