Check out Victor Campenaerts' hour record setting Ridley Arena TT bike

Belgium's Victor Campenaerts, a Lotto-Soudal team member, beat the hour record in Mexico today and here's the bike, named the Flying Moustache in a public poll, that he'll be riding.

The current record of 54.526km was set by Bradley Wiggins at the Lee Valley VeloPark in London back in 2015.

Sir Bradley Wiggins backs Victor Campenaerts to beat his Hour record

The geometry of the Ridley Arena TT frameset is exactly the same as that of Campenaerts’ Dean FAST. Instead of fitting the rider on to a stock frame, the frame geometry has been fully customised to Campenaerts’ ideal position. 

The down tube features Ridley's F-Surface Plus which is tech that the brand uses across all of its aero bikes, including the Noah and the Dean. The surface is grooved in certain areas to reduce drag.

"What these grooves do is create a tiny turbulence which causes the main flow of air to better follow the shape of the tube," says Ridley. "With a smooth air travel around the frame, you’ll expertly cut through wind. The stronger the wind, the more you will feel this technology working for you."

The aero bar extensions are designed specifically to fit Campenaerts' arms.

"This process started in January 2018," says Ridley. "Victor was new to the team and eager to test this new technology. We were able to create a mould of his left and right arm, from his elbow to the grips of the extensions. Subsequently this was copied into a carbon version."

The extensions gained UCI approval and Campenaerts first used them at the World Championships individual time trial in Innsbruck last year, where he took the bronze medal behind Rohan Dennis and Tom Dumoulin. 

The base bar is astonishingly narrow – 33cm, to be precise (the drop handlebar on a standard road bike is usually somewhere between 40cm and 44cm). Campenaerts will only use the base bar for the first few seconds as gets up to speed from a standing start, and thereafter will just add to the drag, so the minimum he can get away with has to be an advantage.

Campenaerts is currently experimenting with 63x15 and 59x14 gears (Wiggo used 58x14 on his Pinarello Bolide HR). Those two ratios are very similar, resulting in 8.7 metres development per pedal stroke. Campenaerts will aim to pedal at a cadence of around 105rpm to beat Wiggins' record. Of course, that's easier said than done. 

The team will take six chainring sizes (from 58-tooth to 63-tooth) and six sprocket sizes (13-tooth to 18-tooth) to Mexico and make the final decision on what to use in the days leading up to the record attempt on 16th or 17th April. 

The chainring and sprocket have been specially milled with the aim of reducing friction, and Campenaerts will use a road chain instead of a track chain. 

(Yep, we showed you this last month but he's broken the record now so it seems like a good time to break it out again.)