Tour Tech 2016: Simon Gerrans’ Scott Foil aero road bike

We showed you young Adam Yates’ Scott Foil the other day, now let’s take a closer look at his Orica-BikeExchange team mate Simon Gerrans’ Scott Foil. 

Compared to the Addict, the Foil is Scott’s aerodynamic road bike. It’s designed to reduce drag with carefully shaped tube profiles to make it slipperier than the Addict.

- The fastest aero road bikes

This is the latest version of the Foil, the original was first launched in 2011 and represented one of the first available aero bikes, and marked a whole new period of development for bike manufacturers. Now you can’t move for aero bikes at the Tour. 

Scott Foil 2016 - first ride review

Key changes to the new Foil include improved ride comfort, a lighter frame weight (claimed 945g for a medium) and increased stiffness at the bottom bracket and head tube. Oh, and it’s more aero, too, with a claimed 6 watt drag reduction. That’s worth about 27 seconds over 40km at 45ph, according to a test by the well respected German TOUR magazine. Those are the sorts of speed the Tour clocks along at. 

Simon has his bike built up with a Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groupset with an SRM power meter, and Dura-Ace C50 wheels, the default choice for those teams running Shimano groupsets. There are the optional sprint shifters on the drops as well for an extra gear changing option.

Orica-BikeExchange also uses Shimano’s PRO equipment and here Simon’s bike has a PRO aluminium stem, shunning the aero stem that Scott developed specifically for this new frameset. It’s a 120mm length stem with just a couple of slim spacers underneath it, and the Di2 junction box strapped to the stem.

Unusually perhaps, he uses a carbon fibre handlebar from PRO. It’s wrapped in fetching green PRO handlebar tape. 

Tyres are supplied by Continental with the ubiquitous Competition ProLtd in a 25mm width.

His saddle of choice is a Fizik Antares. Notice how the saddle clamp has been worn away by the constant rubbing of his inner thigh on the seatpost? That’s due to the shape of the saddle and the fact he has it pushed back quite far on the rails.

This bracket glued to the back of the seatpost is the number plate holder. Wondering why the bike is so dirty? Simon had just returned from a training ride in the rain when we arrived at the team hotel in the days leading up to the Grand Depart.