With the new year now officially upon us, teams' contracts with their sponsors have officially transitioned into a new period. For a lot of teams that means new deals with new sponsors, and January 1st is prime time for a social media post announcing their arrival and getting a headstart on promoting the new "best [insert product] I've ever used".
Ever the consummate professional, Filippo Ganna duly followed suit, announcing the "bike and jersey" that his Ineos Grenadiers team will be using in 2024. The bike, his Pinarello Dogma F, is unchanged from last year albeit with a new lick of paint. The jersey, and the rest of his clothing for that matter, is a reiteration of the recently announced switch from Bioracer to Gobik, complete with a minor change in design.
However, it was Ganna's Kask helmet that caught our attention. Notably absent from the caption, Ganna and a few of his teammates are sporting what appears to be a new aero helmet from the Italian brand, complete with an EPS shell that continues down over the outside of the ears.
We suspect this may have been the real motivation for the post, and the "bike and jersey" context was all just a ruse. There is absolutely no concerted effort to conceal the new helmet in the post. In fact, the opposite appears more true as it features in every single photo, from almost every angle conceivable.
The helmet's biggest talking point has to be the over-ear design of the helmet's shell. Pretty much every modern road helmet features a cut-out that sees the lower line of the helmet travel up and over the ear, whereas time trial helmets such as the Kask Bambino almost always come down and cover the ears.
The new helmet has adopted a halfway approach, bringing the shell of the helmet down to cover just the tops of the ears in a design that is reminiscent of a 1986 Citroen CX.
It's an easy leap to make to assume that the motivations for this move are aerodynamics, ears aren't exactly an aerodynamic shape, so guiding the air around them can feasibly see a benefit. There could even be benefits in reduced airflow noise for the wearer.
Given the vent positioning on the front and their likeness to the Kask Utopia helmet, we'd speculate that this is a replacement for that. The Utopia was originally launched in 2018 – six years ago – but saw a minor update in May last year with the launch of the Utopia Y. That update simply comprised a few internal changes such as a new padding system and OctoFit+ retention.
We can only guess what internals this helmet uses, as that's the only angle not shown in Ganna's photos, but you can see a WG11 logo printed on the rear quarter. WG11 stands for Working Group 11 and refers to the helmet testing procedure that Kask adheres to over and above the industry standard requirement.
We can also only speculate as to the price of the new helmet. Kask stunned us last year with the launch of one of the most expensive helmets on the market, the £325.00 Elemento which boasted Fluid Carbon 12 carbon fibre plates and 3D printed padding more commonly found on saddles. At least visually, it doesn't look as though the new aero helmet uses carbon fibre plates, but we can't rule that out entirely without seeing it up close. We also can't rule out the possibility that it uses 3D-printed padding.
