Ineos Grenadiers finds more time trial marginal gains at Vuelta a España with transponder hack

The British team was hunting out every aero benefit possible during stage 10, but sometimes the solutions aren’t what you are expecting

10:32, Thursday 7th September 2023

Alex Hunt

Junior Tech Writer

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Ineos Grenadiers has found a new marginal gain for its TT set-up that is at the budget end of the spectrum

Cycling has long been a sport that has followed a trajectory of becoming more and more scientific and mathematical in its approach. It is not dissimilar to Formula 1 with the product development, testing and optimisation for each rider. A lot of this is attributed to Team Sky, now Ineos Grenadiers, in its hunt for marginal gains.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in time trialling. Although we are seeing less and less time trial kilometres across the board than we were a decade ago, the race of truth still often provides riders with the best chance of eking out an advantage over their rivals.

The typical transponder location on the fork leg of Remco Evenepoel's Specialized Shiv TT

With time trial speeds often nudging over a 55kph average speed for the top riders, aerodynamic optimisation is a necessity to be competitive in the discipline, with time trial bikes spending years in development to refine the profile of the system to be as slippery as possible through the wind.

Every detail is scrutinised for a time trial set-up from the rider's position on the bike to the clothing they wear, and even what gear they ride in, with teams looking at every fine detail to find an edge.

To keep track of riders and to accurately record their times, all riders are required to have a transponder fitted to the fork of their bikes. This is a plastic box that weighs a few grams and is about two centimetres square that sticks out roughly a centimetre. Although this doesn’t sound like much, having to fix this to the perfectly aero-optimised fork on a TT bike is going to have a negative impact on its performance.

After all the wind tunnel testing and fine tuning to get the bike and rider as aero as possible, having to put anything that will increase drag is going to be best avoided. Most teams do their best to smooth the unit by covering it in a heat shrink wrap that holds the transponder in place while giving some smoother edges for the wind to flow over.

Filippo Ganna rode to time trial victory in the stage 10 TT with the transponder taped to the rear of the fork leg

Ineos Grenadiers has taken this one step further and looked at how else it can hide the mandatory timing equipment. Filippo Ganna was spotted on his way to stage 10 time trial victory with his transponder fitted in an unusual manner along with Geraint Thomas and the rest of the team. As opposed to having the unit mounted on the outer face of the fork leg, you can see that it has been mounted to the trailing edge of the fork, fixed with what looks to be insulation tape.

This is a really neat location to hide the transponder as it has the benefit of sitting out of the wind in a sheltered position as well as extending the bottom of the forks aspect ratio that could potentially boost aerodynamic efficiency by a fraction of a watt.

It is likely that this is an idea from Ineos Grenadiers performance engineer Dan Bigham who is well known for his aerodynamic optimisation of the team's riders and equipment. It is unclear just how much of a benefit that mounting the transponder in this location makes but it is visibly an ideal location to hide the item out of the wind with less effect on the performance of the system as a whole.

For the latest racing news from La Vuelta a España head over to our dedicated race section on the website for news, highlights and race reports, or check out more time trial tech from the race here.