AiR TTE

We first saw Boardman’s new range-topping time trial frame, the AiR TTE (claimed frame weight 1.25kg) ahead of the Kona Ironman World Championship in Hawaii, where it was ridden by Boardman-sponsored triathlete Pete Jacobs. Like the SLS, the Elite Series launch gave us the chance to see it in the flesh.

Chris Boardman was nicknamed ‘The Professor’ during his time as a rider, when he won three prologue stages of the Tour de France, thanks to his fascination with technology and aerodynamics, and that has continued in retirement, first as head of British Cycling’s R&D ‘Secret Squirrel Club’, which helped develop the bike on which Bradley Wiggins won London 2012 time trial gold, and now at his own bike brand.

“I did a lot of work with the British team and we did a lot of nifty and shiny things, but none of the specific designs can be used when working with my own brand,” said Boardman.

“But the knowledge doesn’t go away, and you know what tools to use and what people to work with, so we’ve used that over the past two years and taken it to another level with the AiR TTE.”

The AiR TTE features a sleek cockpit – cables are completely hidden from view, and therefore, air flow – and a Boardman-designed front brake integrated into the fork, while the rear brake is hidden behind the bottom bracket. The bike is yet to receive the seal of the approval from the UCI’s technical commission but Boardman told RoadCyclingUK he expects it to “just” fall on the right side of the line. “It wasn’t an absolute priority to design a UCI-legal bike, we wanted to make the fastest bike,” Boardman told us.

Boardman revealed his team used a “holistic” approach to wind tunnel testing. “We started off by using tools like CFD and seeing how different parts of the bike affect air flow but this time we’ve taken it to another level,” he said.

“We laser scanned our athletes and moved on from our original process, which was really useful to us, to a more holistic approach, building everything into the model: the rider, the clothing, everything that goes in to performance. That allowed us to visualise every part of the bike and understand where we are able to make gains.”

Wind tunnel testing revealed the AiR TTE is up to 24 per cent faster than its predecessor but Boardman was keen to point out that the bike is only a small part of the aerodynamic package.

“That’s where a lot of people stop but it’s not really the truth as that’s just the cockpit of the bike – the bars, the fork, the frame. What’s the actual impact on performance?” he said.

“In reality the rider is 80 per cent of the frontal area and that translates to a four per cent reduction in the actual drag of the total package, which doesn’t sound as good, and when you take into account frictional loses it’s actually just 3.3 per cent. But when you look at that over the distance of something like an Ironman triathlon, it can actually be quite enormous [seven minutes, according to Boardman’s testing].

“It’s been a really rewarding and informative process but more than anything I think it’s just a really beautiful looking bike.”

And that it is. The AiR TTE will be available as a frameset only for £3,499.99 or in two builds, with Shimano Ultegra Di2 (AiR TTE 9.8 Di2, claimed weight 8.6kg, £4,999.99) and Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 (AiR TTE 9.8 Di2 Dura-Ace, 7.95kg, £8,999.99).

The AiR TT frame also remains in the range, again available as a frameset only for £1,799.99, or in three builds, with a Shimano Tiagra and 105 mix (AiR TT 9.0, claimed weight 9kg, £2,299.99), Shimano Ultegra (AiR TT 9.2, 8.7kg, £2,799.99) and Shimano Ultegra Di2 (AiR TT 9.4 Di2, 8.8kg, £3,499.99).