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Closeup: What’s on Shimano’s Neutral Support Pinarello road bikes?

what bikes does Shimano Neutral Support use in the Tour de France and Giro d-Italia
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Depending on the race, you’re either going to see Mavic’s yellow cars and bikes, or these blue Shimano Neutral Support cars with Pinarello Dogma road bikes on them. For the 2018 Giro d’Italia, Shimano’s vehicles carried a full range of frame sizes, with a mix of rim and disc brake bikes. All, of course, were running top-level brand new Dura-Ace Di2, Dura-Ace wheels and (mostly) PRO cockpits.

The bikes are Pinarello Dogma F10 and F10 Disc, both the latest top level road racing bikes from the Italian brand.

Shimano Neutral Support bikes and products for the tour de france and giro d-italia

Up front are allow PRO bars and stems with PRO handlebar tape.

Shimano Neutral Support bikes and products for the tour de france and giro d-italia

Seatposts were PRO, also, but the saddles were Selle Italia’s top of the line SP-01 Kit Carbonio Superflow saddles, which have a nearly full length center relief channel running all the way out through a split tail. The carbon fiber shell wraps to create a leaf spring design to improve comfort. It’s a $390 production saddle based off the prototype concepts we saw at Taipei Cycle Show in 2017, though with a less glossy finish on the bottom and slight tweaks to the rail connections on the back.

Shimano Neutral Support bikes and products for the tour de france and giro d-italia

The groups were full Dura-Ace, with the bikes we checked running a universal 52-36 chainring combo. Some bikes had Dura-Ace SPD pedals, others had Speedplay or Look. The goal with these bikes is to get a rider back on course as quickly as possible when their team car is too far away, so having a variety of the most commonly used pedals makes sense.

Shimano Neutral Support bikes and products for the tour de france and giro d-italia

Disc brakes FTW.

Shimano Neutral Support bikes and products for the tour de france and giro d-italia

It’s not just the pros that get Shimano’s attention. In the US, they’re present at 50+ events per year to offer technical support, quick fixes and more. Follow their Multi-Service team on Twitter, and check the schedule here.

Bike.Shimano.com

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chris Francato
chris Francato
5 years ago

Seatposts definitely are not made by pro those are pinarello proprietary seatposts

Crash Bandicoot
Crash Bandicoot
5 years ago

Interesting I think GCN did a video with Mavic neutral service and they used fairly good but older kit (mainly narrow wheels which I was surprised about given that most WT teams are on rim brakes). Pretty crazy how a neutral bike is probably better than anything I’d ever buy.

mech9
5 years ago

The mavic ones also had dropper seatpost which make total sense for a neutral bike. Not sure why these don’t have a dropper.

Bryan
Bryan
5 years ago

I wonder how the set the brakes up. In some places in Europe, people ride with the right lever as the front brake and the left lever as rear brake. In the U.S., we generally do it the opposite.

Obviously the pros never seem to have a problem with however the neutral bike brakes are setup or we would probably hear about it. They must just always use both brakes so it is not too big of an issue.

Crash Bandicoot
Crash Bandicoot
5 years ago
Reply to  Bryan

It appears from the cable routing in the pics that they set them up with the left hand controlling the front brake.

xcracer
xcracer
5 years ago
Reply to  Bryan

People ride crossed up brakes on road bikes? I thought that was only a MTB thing that came from Motorcycle riders being too used to their right hand being the front brake, and therefore replicating it on a mountain bike.
There definitely isn’t much similarity between a road bike / bar / brake lever and a motorcycles….

Leon
Leon
5 years ago

In the UK front brake on the right is normal. It’s to do with the side of the road you drive. It’s not as hard as you think switching sides though, not that I’d want to do it mid race. I imagine pros all ride standard “front right” otherwise crazyness would ensue

Peter
Peter
5 years ago
Reply to  Leon

Almost all pros ride front-left, most of the UK UCI teams that are regularly racing abroad will race with their brakes set up euro. If you look at a front brake and most frames they’re designed to be run that way round with the rear brake cable entering on the left hand side of the frame so when it comes from the bars it doesn’t rub the frame set up euro. We in the UK are one of the only places in the world that runs the brakes the way we do, so it makes sense that frames and brakes are designed for the majority.

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