Tom Pidcock lines up for Saturday’s 19.6km team time trial in Barcelona aboard a Pinarello Bolide F to start off the 2026 Tour de France campaign, Cycling Weekly reports. The bike is built to squeeze out every possible second, and, surprisingly, a good chunk of that speed comes from a 3D printer!
While his Pinarello Q36.5 teammates ride the standard navy-and-gold Bolide F, Pidcock gets a one-off black-and-gold paint job. The frame itself carries over tech from the Bolide F HR, the bike Italy’s track squads used in Olympic endurance events – most visibly in the ribbed “AirStream” edging along the seat tube and seatpost, designed to cut drag.
The cockpit is where the printer really earns its keep. A dual-stack, five-spacer setup holds custom one-piece bar extensions from Most, and each extension carries two 3D-printed lattice strips to cushion the forearms without adding bulk – this is the same porous structure you’d find on a performance saddle.
Down at the drivetrain, Pidcock runs a full SRAM Red AXS groupset with an integrated power meter, paired with an unusually simple 1x setup: a single 60-tooth chainring driving a wide 10-36T cassette through short 160mm crank arms. A Wolf Tooth chainkeeper backs up the X-Sync narrow/wide tooth profile to keep the chain seated over Barcelona’s technical corners, and the chain itself has been wax-treated to cut drivetrain friction.
The smallest detail might be the cleverest: both crank arms have had their bottom-bracket ends capped with 3D-printed plugs, smoothing the surface where air would otherwise catch – a marginal gain, but on a 19.6km team effort, marginal is often exactly what separates the GC contenders from the rest of the field.
