Tour tech 2010: Cadel Evans races the all-new BMC

Cadel Evans has earned himself a reputation as one of the hard man of cycling over the last few days, battling on in the Tour de France despite having fractured his elbow in a crash sustained on stage 8.

He dropped well down the general classification while wearing the yellow jersey on stage 9, and is now out of contention for the overall win, but the current World Road Race Champion insists he’s going to tough it out. Top man!

Like the rest of the BMC Racing Team, Evans is riding the new top-end BMC Impec which will be in the Swiss manufacturer’s line-up for 2011.

The Impec is robot-built from carbon tubes that are manufactured on-site. Instead of placing carbon sheets in moulds by hand, BMC weave carbon fibres into seamless tubes which allows them, they say, to control the form and load-bearing properties of every tube to the maximum extent. The tubes slot into injection-moulded composite joints, a process BMC call their Shell Node Concept.

The frame isn’t as light as some; BMC give a “frame system” (frame, fork, seatpost and headset) weight of 1,790g (3.9lb), which is higher than that of their existing Team Machine. But they reckon this allows them to dial in the stiffness they want while speccing lightweight equipment, and still conform to the UCI’s 6.8kg minimum limit for racing.

We’ll have more details on the new BMC Impec soon.