It’s been frequent information for a while now that Bora Hansgrohe could be welcoming Red Bull on board as a brand new key sponsor simply earlier than the Tour de France. The Red Bull Bora Hansgrohe sponsor launch is going down this week within the run-up to the Tour kicking off on Saturday and consists of the creation of a brand new U23 staff.
New sponsors usually imply package design modifications, and sponsors as huge as behemoth Red Bull proper earlier than the world’s largest bike race positively imply new package and bike designs.
Cyclingnews has unique entry to photographs of the brand new Bora Hansgrohe race bike forward of the race. The bike’s official title is, anticipate it, deep breath, S-Works Tarmac SL8 LTD: Red Bull-BORA-Hansgrohe Edition.
If you need to be taught in regards to the different bikes and gear within the Tour, head to our Tour de France bikes information for a full breakdown of each staff’s machines.
In essence, this bike is a custom-painted S-Works Tarmac SL8 in a Red Bull / Bora color scheme that is referred to as ‘Sticker Slap’. It’s an enormous departure from the inexperienced color scheme we’re used to seeing at Bora and has been designed by Tom Briggs, the Lead Concept Graphic Designer at Specialized.
The bike connected press launch states that this explicit mannequin is an ‘actual reproduction of the bike the staff will on the 20204 Tour de France’ It might be restricted to 500 individually numbered bikes worldwide. Price-wise, the brand new mannequin will set you again $16,000 in order for you one (try our piece on how a lot Tour de France bikes value for extra eye-watering value tags). We hope that the bike, not less than, comes with a complimentary can of Red Bull or two.
At first look it is easy to dismiss the bike as merely ‘pearl white, with Red Bull color accents’ however upon closure inspection, there are certainly dozens of smaller graphics hiding in plain sight. The design is made up of ‘S-Works’ and ‘Bora Hansgrohe’ and repeats. This is the ‘Sticker Slap’ design which Lead Designer Briggs expanded on;
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“The design was impressed by youth tradition and 90’s skateboarding aesthetics. The clustering of logos on boards and different objects within the type of stickers confirmed authenticity and connectedness to one thing counter-culture.”
We aren’t specialists on Skateboard tradition right here at Cyclingnews, nevertheless it appears skateboard stickers fashioned part of the artwork and tradition across the sport again then. Specialized as a model has its headquarters in California the place plenty of surf and skateboard tradition initially flourished and celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this yr, so will definitely have lived by way of a few of these occasions. The model mentions this and its ‘want to maintain innovating’ within the bikes press materials.
The bike’s spec naturally is a prime one. It’s fitted with the newest Sram Red AXS groupset and Hammerhead Karoo laptop, Roval’s Rapide CLX II Team wheels that are additionally restricted to 1500 units. Then there’s the Roval Rapide cockpit and Specialized Turbo cotton tyres besides. Specialized additionally claims a dimension 56cm bike weighs in at 6.66kg.
We will quickly see if staff chief Primoz Roglic pilots the brand new bike to success within the Tour. 500 bikes worldwide make this machine a uncommon one, however in addition they characterize a extremely public big-money sponsor getting into the street biking world in a transfer which must be good for the Bora Hansgrohe staff and sport.