Made to give Michał Kwiatkowski (Poland), Magnus Sheffield (USA), reigning European Time Trial Champion Josh Tarling (Great Britain) and former World Time Trial Champions Tobias Foss (Norway) and Filippo Ganna (Italy) every advantage at the Paris Olympics’ Individual Time Trial, Pinarello has unveiled a new version of the Bolide F TT bike reduces drag by 2.28% over its predecessor.
The drag reduction comes from two design features – AirStream AeroNodes and AirFoil sections.
The AirStream AeroNodes were inspired by the tubercules found on humpback whale flippers. They’re integrated onto the seat tube and seat post to reduce the complex vortexes generated by riders’ leg movements to improve airflow.
AirFoil sections on the bottom bracket and wheel hubs are longer and slimmer to reduce the frontal area.
Pinarello says they found, counter to trends, adding space between the fork and tire didn’t improve aerodynamics more than keeping the total frontal area as slim as possible. So, they did increase fork crown width slightly, but only to increase tire clearance to fit 32mm tires, up from 28mm.
It also gets the small “fork flap chip” from the Dogma F, giving it little trailing edges behind the front axles for more incremental gains.
They made the fork legs and seatstays slimmer, too, reinforcing those sections to maintain stiffness for maximum power transfer.
The cockpit was optimized not just for its own aerodynamics, but for how it maximized rider-plus-bike aerodynamics.
Lastly, they revised the aero bottle, cage, and position to eke out a few more gains.
Each athlete will be riding a Bolide F TT in this special Luxter Red Gold and Luxter Blue colorway, with their nationalities on the seat tube. For everyone else, it’s available in four frame sizes and it should be available later this year with the “Games” spec of full Dura-Ace Di2. Price TBA.
