The nose cone looks like it came straight off a 2011 Shiv. Looks like UCI won round 1 but bike manufacturers are back for another round. On a side topic a good search for 2011 shiv brings up this bike http://www.conradstoltz.com/...tandem-concept-bike/ which is truly a piece of art. It also has internally routed disk brakes of the type I would expect to see if disks do become standard on the road.

Very interesting to see a brand ADD a nosecone after having a very aero bike without one. Surprising on two counts. First is the bucking of the UCI and the second is with regards to handling. I really liked the nosecone Shiv, but for sure there was a price to pay on the handling front with that added surface area in front of the steerer.

Great to see Scott continuing to push the bar though. I was worried when they basically scaled back with pro cycling - parting ways with High Road, who really seemed to press them to make the original Plasma 3 - that they'd sort of give up a bit on development of aero bikes. Glad to see that's not the case.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

He smashed the bike segment and won the race:

http://www.slowtwitch.com/..._Kraichgau_4386.html

Hard to tell but it looks like they put a Kamm tail on the downtube like the Treks. Maybe made the head tube/toptube/downtube junction a bit deeper as well.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Where on earth is his flat kit??

It is truncated at least near the bottle mounts, which I think the P5 also does.

Also the seat stay/ seat tube junction is now closer to the shiv than the old plasma and the Felt DA.

Looks like the down tube stays closer the front tire as it insects the head tube, like the P5 and not like the SC.

I am guessing that the nose cone and fork are similar to what Trek and Cervelo do, with a UCI legal front end and UCI illegal front end with deeper fork legs and covered brakes?

Does Sebastian normally run with only one bottle, because that nose cone is pretty big? The torhans 30 will lower drag on some fast frames if it is set up right, so a "torhans" like bottle up front designed for the frame could be an interesting idea.

The head tube/top tube junction is interesting also, with the fork attaching between the top tube and head tube.

Maybe there is a Rafael connection here: http://www.slowtwitch.com/..._at_Rafael_2044.html

Here's another photo via another 'twitcher: https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/...79393661690717_n.jpg

If you look closely, it appears there's a straw coming out of the nose cone indicating it does double duty holding some hydration. I had that idea just a couple of weeks ago! Darn!

I don't really see massive nose cone fairings as moving the bar in the right direction. Soon we will all have motorcycle style front end fairings like TJ tried to run at Kona one year. Only bigger.

..

Orica are possibly a stronger TTT outfit than Highroad were and they have IAM cycling in Continental ranks. So still a bit of commitment to Cycling. Not that the front end shown reveals any focus on TT. That stem arrangement is going to be fun to work on...

Will have to be a disc only bike with the nosecone on.

Is that a new helmet as well? It looks like it might be a bit more compact than the original split. It also might just be an optical illusion due to the wacky paint scheme.

I agree it looks like the nose cone will come off and be a UCI legal bike. There have been rumors that SCOTT had something in the pipeline. I'm guessing we'll see the UCI bike debuted at the tour.

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Heath Dotson
HD Coaching:Website |Twitter: 140 Characters or Less|Facebook:Follow us on Facebook

Figured it was in the hardshell bento box.

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/Howie Nordström

Could be ... just realized he is on clinchers, right?

clinchers , running Conti's Grand Prix TT's 23

looks to me that the bottle is in there! really neat looking solution, versus a torhans.

i think the rear brake integration is not complete on this bike, it nearly looks like a box is added to hide rear brake and then duct taped.

looks like the bike is working really well for Sebastien, since he won with quite a margin!

Nice evolution!

I think it's just the paint scheme. Have my Split in hand and looking at the photo on Sebastian's FB page I can't see any differences.

I was going to say "probably inside the nose cone"...but it seems that he would not need straw to suck out his flat kit from the nose cone!

To Rappstar's point though, is at nose cone a crash waiting to happen in the hands of age groupers with deep pockets whose bike handling skills are inversely proportional to the depth of their pockets?

Cannot tell from any of the front end pictures...but is the bar system something new and proprietary?...they clearly are not the PRO missile bars he had previously been ridding on his Plasma 3

It's interesting how "shallow" the base bars are on Kienle's rig. Some of the new bars that don't need to be UCI legal seem to be getting deeper: http://www.tririg.com/...pt_Review&num=57

So what happens to handling when there is a nosecone? And what ever became of the Shiv with the cone? I don't know the history.

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Madison photographer Timothy Hughes | Instagram

The nosecone pushes the center of pressure forwards. It would be like riding a really deep front wheel... like a 1080. Maybe not that bad, but it certainly will make handling twitchy in the wind unless Scott's engineers worked some magic.

I know we're talking about the bike but.... with my very untrained eye, it looks like SK drops his pad stack for 70.3 and then brings them back up for IM.

I could be way off.

bring on the tour for IAM and Orica-greenedge