Tour Tech 2016: Greg Van Avermaet’s BMC TeamMachine SLR01

It’s been a dream Tour de France for Belgian classics specialist Greg Van Avermaet, winning the yellow jersey after a nine-man breakaway and solo escape on stage five, and holding onto it until stage seven. 

BMC hasn’t updated its long-running TeamMachine SLR01 in a few years since (is a new version imminent?), but it still offers the low weight and high stiffness that a pro racer demands of in a bike. The team has, though, given the bike a fresh new look this year, swapping the usual black and red for a white finish that we reckon looks pretty good. 

New paint scheme aside, it’s business as usual. A Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groupset with Dura-Ace wheels, in this case, the shallow section C35 rather than the more common C50. Continental provides 25mm Competition ProLTD tyres for the whole team. 

Italian company 3T provides the carbon fibre handlebars - a very classic drop - with a matching aluminium stem. BMC makes its own seatpost as part of the frame, and a Fizik Antares saddle tops it.

SRM power meters are still the most popular power measuring devices in the professional peloton, and it’s what Greg uses. He’s got the details of the stage taped to the stem, so he knows when the feed zones and climbs are coming up. 

You can see in this photo that Greg uses the optional sprint shifters on the drops - that’s so he can change gears while riding in the drops a bit more easily, it just adds another option basically. 

The TeamMachine is one of the lightest frames in the peloton with a 790g frame weight and all designed using the Swiss company’s very own computer modelling software, which allowed it to analyse every tube shape and wall thickness to hone the bike to provide the target weight and stiffness. 

It’s one of the nicest riding race bikes to pass through the road.cc offices, we found it to offer impressive comfort as well as the speed and stiffness it displays when you give it the full beans. That comfort is thanks to what BMC calls Tuned Compliance Concept (TCC), which is their way of lending the bike the ability to squash high-frequency vibrations. It includes skinny seatstays and fork blades and a small diameter seatpost.

Thanks to BMC for the photos.