A Team Cofidis Look 795 Blade RS has been spotted at the Tour de France today with what appears to be a Campagnolo Super Record 1X front chainset.
Campagnolo launched its new Super Record 13 groupset at the start of last month, which saw the Italian giant's flagship Super Record electronic wireless groupset receive a major overhaul, notably getting 13 sprockets at the rear, making it the world's first 2x13 speed road groupset.
At launch, there was no 1X or single chainring drivetrain option. It's a component choice that is very common in the WorldTour on riders' time trial bikes, and also on SRAM-equipped bikes, such as 2x Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard's Cervelo S5.
A 1X front chainset allows riders to remove the front derailleur, dropping some weight, providing an aerodynamic gain as well as lessening mechanical losses and aiding chainline efficiency depending on the chosen gear ratios. It now looks like Campagnolo has or is about to join the party.
Optimisations for the Tours uphill time trial
The bike in the pictures didn't have a race number, which points to it not being a rider's No. 1 race machine.
It does, however, have a name sticker on the drive side seatstay. The team may have been preparing it for Friday's Stage 13 uphill time trial.
It was a few days back now, and given the pace of news at the Tour de France, it would be easy to forget the mass theft of €145,000 worth of team race bikes from the Cofidis mechanic truck. Luckily, the team scrambled new equipment from the Look factory and service course to build up new bikes in next to no time.
Friday's time trial stage is a mere 11 kilometres long and features an 8km climb at 7.9% average gradient.
The time trial should provide a veritable tech fest, we won't know until the stage kicks off and we start seeing bikes if riders have gone for all-out aero, climbing bikes or a sort of hybrid mix.
Given the bike in the shot has lighter Hyperon Ultra wheels fitted from Campagnolo and a yet unseen 1X crankset, perhaps this is an indication that teams will have run the numbers and will be opting for lightweight, aero-influenced climbing setups, which should make the tech all the more exciting!
The Campagnolo press office told us that this bike had a 50-tooth front chainring and another 48-tooth option would be experimented with.
The bike in question also does not feature a shifter paddle on the left-hand shifter. This indicates that a 1X groupset variant may be fully developed, and this isn't just a single-ring crankset swapped onto a 2X groupset.
The current 2x13 Super Record crankset uses carbon fibre arms and a titanium Ultra Torque hirth joint axle. We assume this crankset uses largely the same design with some redesign to accommodate interchangeable single chainrings.
At present, the only other 1x13 road gearing is used by the Lidl-Trek team, who have used the SRAM Red XPLR gravel groupset for the spring classics.
