The battle for the general rages on on the Vuelta a España in the present day and Primož Roglič seems set to attempt to wrestle the pink jersey from total race chief Ben O’Connor because the race enters its ultimate phases.
O’Connor’s as soon as wholesome lead has been reduce to the short during the last a number of phases however Roglič will certainly be searching for each attainable benefit in his quest for victory. Something which will solely collect tempo sooner or later after the announcement this week that Dan Bigham will be a part of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe as Head of Engineering.
The quest for aro positive factors seems to have already begun with Primož Roglič utilizing an unknown pc that we do not recognise for a minimum of one stage of the race. Stage 15’s horrifying climb on Cuitu Negru specifically appears to have obtained particular consideration from Roglic who switched to a motorcycle with a 1x drivetrain and enormous cassette with decrease gearing earlier than the race hit the climb.
The Slovenian’s thriller unit clearly differs from the remainder of his teammates who’re utilizing the newest Hammerhead Karoo unit which was launched alongside the SRAM Red AXS groupset in May. The pc is not SRAM solely however is designed across the Red AXS groupset for enchancment integration.
Our ideas on what the unit may very well be are under together with some helpful photographs from the race which give a transparent comparability.
What might this unit be?
The Hammerhead Karoo is definitely recognisable because of its tapered form and enormous white lettering on the entrance of the unit. Roglič seems to be the one rider on the Bora-Hansgrohe workforce utilizing the alternate pc presently and has been doing so for a number of phases. The unit has been hiding in plain sight, however is clearly quite a bit smaller than the inventory workforce unit and has no branding, unsurprising if this can be a new or alternate unit.
We have no particulars on the unit and might solely speculate on what it could be at this level. SRAM owns Hammerhead and the Karoo has been designed to combine with the Red AXS groupset that the workforce began utilizing at the beginning of this 12 months.
We obtained in contact with SRAM to search out out and the model advised us that the mannequin in query is in truth a competitor head unit, maybe a blacked-out Garmin Edge 130 mannequin. The model stated they permit riders to be versatile on particular days to go well with their particular wants. The use of an alternate, smaller unit by Roglič highlights a single-minded pursuit of the quickest attainable setup while chasing victory.
Plenty of WorldTour groups now attempt to use the smallest pc they will within the title of aerodynamics. A smaller form bolted onto the entrance of the bike goes to offer an aerodynamic saving irrespective of how small. We discovered one other instance of this after we examined how aero inserting sun shades into the entrance of your helmet is within the wind tunnel. Alongside smaller computer systems, groups are additionally utilizing 3d printer aero pc mounts to easy the airflow on this space. We snapped some examples of those aero pc mounts into our Vuelta tech gallery from the race.
We have seen Garmin and Wahoo sponsored groups utilizing the smaller Bolt and Edge 130 Plus fashions already for a small aero benefit or to suit nicely in between tri-bar extensions. In future might this result in the event of a brand new smaller / race-focused unit from Hammerhead?