IN PROFESSIONAL CYCLING, lessons learned in Formula One are being adopted to deal with the high-performance human engines on bicycles.
Recently The 42 travelled to meet engineers and sports scientists inside Red Bull Bora Hansgrohe – a cycling team that has adopted the scientific approach to cycling that we saw on the tracks of Imola or Spa.
Since the early 2010s, guess work in professional cycling has been replaced by an approach closer to principles of physics, chemistry and biology.
It is working. Belgian cyclist Remco Evenepoel took stage victories and second place overall at this year’s Tour de France. He went on this weekend to continue his winning ways with victory in Classica San Sebastián.
Sky Cycling Team, now Netcompany Ineos, introduced the concept of marginal gains – small improvements that when put together amount to a crucial difference.
Scepticism around that concept and science in cycling is prevalent in the world outside the sport’s bubble. Team Sky’s practices were not without their controversies, with the suspicions around the delivery of a jiffy bag and some involved behind the scenes.
There have also been problems with the presence of doctors and other specialists in the heyday of suspicions in the 2000s, but the difference now is the testing regime. During the Tour, controversy swirled around early morning tests with anti-doping testers arriving at 2am.
Jonathan Vaughters of anti-doping team EF said that the testing regime is building credibility for the sport.
“My guess is that those tests are going to turn out to be fine and that then you’ve established more credibility for the sport than we had before, and we’re showing that we’re doing something that no other sport is even coming close to doing in terms of anti-doping testing,” he said.
The results of those tests will come and the sceptics will always be present around cycling but there is clearly a revolution that is making the sport faster and an awful lot of that is because of the presence of actual scientific minds working behind the scenes.
From our visit to the Red Bull set up, our observations suggest that rather than tiny improvements, it is now major leaps forward and one of the key driving forces behind that is Dan Bigham, head of engineering at Red Bull Bora Hansgrohe.
Bigham was a champion cyclist in the past. Taking gold at the European Track championships among other victories. He also represented Britain on the track at the Olympics.
Behind the successful sport background, Bigham has a different string to his bow. His academic experience is in aerodynamics in motorsport and caused him to work with Mercedes in Formula One. This led him to employment with the marginal gains inventors Ineos and now Red Bull.
Bigham looks at it all holistically from what a rider eats to how they recover, but his background is in making a competitor go through the air faster. He looks at optimisation of clothing and equipment combined with the position of the rider and this is the key to gain not just fractions of time, but seconds.
We met Bigham inside a building close to Sacre Couer in Paris where Red Bull were hosting a party to celebrate his team’s Tour de France success. He had just watched his work come to fruition at the last stage of the Tour in the French capital.
He was all smiles and clearly enjoying the relief that his concept had been proven, but also grateful that Red Bull has given him a home to realise it.
“There’s always a lot of potential in this sport to keep moving forward, and really, what you need to find is an environment that happily supports you and nurtures you and that, should we say, entertains my wild ideas.
“I think I’ve found my home in that respect, and I enjoy everything about being a part of this team. And no, it’s not always easy, but days like this make it absolutely worthwhile,” he said.
Bigham is not alone in his pursuit, however, and The 42 travelled to Austria to meet many of those behind the scenes who are supporting him.
In the small town of Thalgau, near Salzburg, there is a collection of houses and buildings in what was once an iron foundry. It is here where the Red Bull Athlete Performance Centre helps everyone from Max Verstappen to Remco Evenepoel realise their athletic potential.
It is also here where the journey to Tour de France glory begins. On a tour of the facility there is equipment to measure the athlete’s capabilities – from the performers who jump out of planes in wing suits, to footballers, to sailors, to motorsport.
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Irish athlete
There is also a system in place where athletes who are injured can come and get healthy to return to competition. One such Red Bull competitor is Wicklow man Rónán Dunne.
The downhill mountain biker suffered a horrific broken leg when his foot got caught in the ground while turning at speed four months ago.
We met him as he limped through the centre where he is receiving rehabilitation to get him back on the slopes. He has taken three weeks at the facility to rebuild his leg muscles and confidence.
Red Bull athlete Rónán Dunne from Wicklow recovering from injury in Austria. Niall O'Connor / The Journal
Niall O'Connor / The Journal / The Journal
Dunne told us what Red Bull does for his performance. “They baby you basically,” he laughed.
He said during the three weeks there is a daily plan to work with medics to get back to full fitness.
“It is hard at home to do it yourself and get a good physio but here they have the best in the world. When you stack up every day here, it makes such a huge difference for recovery.
“The whole package really is about getting you back but also ensuring that you have a nice long career. I will be back on the bike faster, but I am also learning constantly when I am here and motivated to do well – it just makes a huge difference,” he said.
Dunne’s experience is an example of all the rest of what we experienced in the Red Bull ecosystem.
It is not just the performance side of things that is supercharged, but also the brand provides strategies to maximise earnings as well as performance.
Lessons learned in Formula One are being fed directly into pro-cycling. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Demands of the race
Bigham and his colleague Jonny Wale at Red Bull speak of preparing for the challenges faced by a rider in a race. It is about getting to the point where every eventuality is considered.
But it is the scientific approach to sport that stands out. We met a scientific bike fitter from US bicycle brand Specialised. Jason Williams from the US said that his job is to find the millimetres that transform results.
Williams is careful about speaking about individuals but he did say that current trends are looking past the mistakes of old of putting riders in ever tighter positions.
He believes the key is getting a rider a position where they combine the best aerodynamic position but also their ability to put the power in their pedalling that can be both efficient and sustained.
One example is how time trial positions are now not exercises in contortion but rather in matching aerdymanics with physiological capability. In short, riders are now riding more upright but still aero in their positions.
He fits the riders to their bikes and combines data from wind tunnel testing in the US with the real world physiological demands of their bodies.
There is also the nutrition side of it. The team would not provide an on record interview on this topic but in a presentation it showed how a rider needs more than 7,000 calories just to get through a Tour de France stage.
This is a hugely complex scientific area. An example of what is expected is what Red Bull rider Florian Lipowitz consumed on the mountainous Stage Six.
He took in 7,573 calories. His basic energy needs for the day were calculated at 2201 calories and the primary training needs were 5,372. In meals alone he got 4,957 calories and during the race, in gels, drinks and race food he took in 2,616 calories.
For stage nine as an example the feeding strategy as they raced through intense heat over 155kms the riders consumed 120 grams of carbohydrates every hour. This was achieved with gels, drinks and chewy carb loaded sports nutrition.
One cornerstone of the feeding process is breakfast. Of a riders Tour de France morning feast there are 1154 calories. There are 200g carbohydrates, 33g of protein, 23g of fat and six grams of fibre.
The types of food consumed are: rice pudding, omelette, honey, cornflakes, bread and pancakes. That is for each rider. Rice pudding has been identified as a greater carb loader than porridge, but some riders still consume that.
When we did have a brief chat with the nutrition experts at Bora they said that controlling body heat will be the key advance in the future. Riders simply perform better with core temperatures kept at closest to normal.
Their advice to amateurs racers back in Ireland: performance in races is dependent on sugar and consuming as much as they can.
Then, during the race, they must take in 120 grams of carbohydrate per hour. After the race there is a dinner cooked by a team chef tailored to their needs. The race across France by day sustained only by the mountain of food.
To give you an idea of how much of a challenge it is to put away the necessary amount of food – for a 50 gram serving of potatoes, there are just eight grams of carbohydrates. The volume is helped by specialist drinks and gels but still it is hard on the body.
Wale, another former rider, works behind the scenes on the performance side of the house.
He worked with Remco Evenepoel on his Tour de France time trial victory. The Belgian is the current World Champion so has the talent. Still, to get the result at the Tour it required a preparation that started in a wind tunnel and a forensic study of the course.
To do this Red Bull uses a Performance Capability Model. The key to this is to study all of the data collected about the rider and the course. This is imput into a simulation programme which produces a result that estimates how the race will likely unfold. They can then tailor how the rider meets the specific demands of the course.
The perfect example of this is their 274 days of planning for the Tour de France time trial stage 16. Carrying out reconnaissance of the course, tailoring the bike with Williams’ skills, and clothing for Evenepoel.
The Belgian also took 80 days away from racing just to focus on his Tour de France preparation.
By late June the team met for one last meeting with Wale, arriving two days before the start of the 26.1km Time Trial. He carried out checks of the course and his final job would be to sit in the car behind Evenepoel and give him details live about the course, like a rally driving co-pilot.
It all came together in the end with Evenepoel securing the win in 32 minutes and 19 seconds, averaging 48.45 km/h. It is understood that there was just eight seconds difference between the simulation and the finishing time.
One key scientific enabler is the involvement of Red Bull’s Formula One scientists. Due to a cap being placed on the spend for motorsport, the Red Bull set-up now uses those F1 data crunchers to analyse the cycling data for three days every week.
Dan Bigham as European Champion in the Individual Pursuit final in 2024. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
We asked Bigham how far can this performance optimisation through science go – is there a cut-off point where they will exhaust the gains.
“All these areas that we’re applying it so quickly, and it’s compounding over time. And that’s why performance is not reaching an asymptote or a plateau. It’s just getting faster and faster and faster.
“Over time, that will slow. But the game then becomes about relative performance again. How can you do it better than your competitors? And it’s just really is to acquire knowledge and action it faster than everybody else,” he said.
That time could well be for 15 years given that Red Bull will fund the team for that period.
On Sunday night in Paris the team gathered near Sacre Coeur in Montmartre for a party to thank the people who supported them throughout the year.
But Bigham and his crew already have eyes on the next big win – the World Championships due to be held in late September and one key area for research will be in making cycling tyres faster.
“It is not to be the best; it is about being better than everybody else,” Bigham said.
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Inside the pro cycling team using Formula One science to transform the sport
IN PROFESSIONAL CYCLING, lessons learned in Formula One are being adopted to deal with the high-performance human engines on bicycles.
Recently The 42 travelled to meet engineers and sports scientists inside Red Bull Bora Hansgrohe – a cycling team that has adopted the scientific approach to cycling that we saw on the tracks of Imola or Spa.
Since the early 2010s, guess work in professional cycling has been replaced by an approach closer to principles of physics, chemistry and biology.
It is working. Belgian cyclist Remco Evenepoel took stage victories and second place overall at this year’s Tour de France. He went on this weekend to continue his winning ways with victory in Classica San Sebastián.
Sky Cycling Team, now Netcompany Ineos, introduced the concept of marginal gains – small improvements that when put together amount to a crucial difference.
Scepticism around that concept and science in cycling is prevalent in the world outside the sport’s bubble. Team Sky’s practices were not without their controversies, with the suspicions around the delivery of a jiffy bag and some involved behind the scenes.
There have also been problems with the presence of doctors and other specialists in the heyday of suspicions in the 2000s, but the difference now is the testing regime. During the Tour, controversy swirled around early morning tests with anti-doping testers arriving at 2am.
Jonathan Vaughters of anti-doping team EF said that the testing regime is building credibility for the sport.
“My guess is that those tests are going to turn out to be fine and that then you’ve established more credibility for the sport than we had before, and we’re showing that we’re doing something that no other sport is even coming close to doing in terms of anti-doping testing,” he said.
The results of those tests will come and the sceptics will always be present around cycling but there is clearly a revolution that is making the sport faster and an awful lot of that is because of the presence of actual scientific minds working behind the scenes.
From our visit to the Red Bull set up, our observations suggest that rather than tiny improvements, it is now major leaps forward and one of the key driving forces behind that is Dan Bigham, head of engineering at Red Bull Bora Hansgrohe.
Bigham was a champion cyclist in the past. Taking gold at the European Track championships among other victories. He also represented Britain on the track at the Olympics.
Behind the successful sport background, Bigham has a different string to his bow. His academic experience is in aerodynamics in motorsport and caused him to work with Mercedes in Formula One. This led him to employment with the marginal gains inventors Ineos and now Red Bull.
Bigham looks at it all holistically from what a rider eats to how they recover, but his background is in making a competitor go through the air faster. He looks at optimisation of clothing and equipment combined with the position of the rider and this is the key to gain not just fractions of time, but seconds.
We met Bigham inside a building close to Sacre Couer in Paris where Red Bull were hosting a party to celebrate his team’s Tour de France success. He had just watched his work come to fruition at the last stage of the Tour in the French capital.
He was all smiles and clearly enjoying the relief that his concept had been proven, but also grateful that Red Bull has given him a home to realise it.
“There’s always a lot of potential in this sport to keep moving forward, and really, what you need to find is an environment that happily supports you and nurtures you and that, should we say, entertains my wild ideas.
“I think I’ve found my home in that respect, and I enjoy everything about being a part of this team. And no, it’s not always easy, but days like this make it absolutely worthwhile,” he said.
Bigham is not alone in his pursuit, however, and The 42 travelled to Austria to meet many of those behind the scenes who are supporting him.
In the small town of Thalgau, near Salzburg, there is a collection of houses and buildings in what was once an iron foundry. It is here where the Red Bull Athlete Performance Centre helps everyone from Max Verstappen to Remco Evenepoel realise their athletic potential.
It is also here where the journey to Tour de France glory begins. On a tour of the facility there is equipment to measure the athlete’s capabilities – from the performers who jump out of planes in wing suits, to footballers, to sailors, to motorsport.
Irish athlete
There is also a system in place where athletes who are injured can come and get healthy to return to competition. One such Red Bull competitor is Wicklow man Rónán Dunne.
The downhill mountain biker suffered a horrific broken leg when his foot got caught in the ground while turning at speed four months ago.
We met him as he limped through the centre where he is receiving rehabilitation to get him back on the slopes. He has taken three weeks at the facility to rebuild his leg muscles and confidence.
Dunne told us what Red Bull does for his performance. “They baby you basically,” he laughed.
He said during the three weeks there is a daily plan to work with medics to get back to full fitness.
“It is hard at home to do it yourself and get a good physio but here they have the best in the world. When you stack up every day here, it makes such a huge difference for recovery.
“The whole package really is about getting you back but also ensuring that you have a nice long career. I will be back on the bike faster, but I am also learning constantly when I am here and motivated to do well – it just makes a huge difference,” he said.
Dunne’s experience is an example of all the rest of what we experienced in the Red Bull ecosystem.
It is not just the performance side of things that is supercharged, but also the brand provides strategies to maximise earnings as well as performance.
Demands of the race
Bigham and his colleague Jonny Wale at Red Bull speak of preparing for the challenges faced by a rider in a race. It is about getting to the point where every eventuality is considered.
But it is the scientific approach to sport that stands out. We met a scientific bike fitter from US bicycle brand Specialised. Jason Williams from the US said that his job is to find the millimetres that transform results.
Williams is careful about speaking about individuals but he did say that current trends are looking past the mistakes of old of putting riders in ever tighter positions.
He believes the key is getting a rider a position where they combine the best aerodynamic position but also their ability to put the power in their pedalling that can be both efficient and sustained.
One example is how time trial positions are now not exercises in contortion but rather in matching aerdymanics with physiological capability. In short, riders are now riding more upright but still aero in their positions.
He fits the riders to their bikes and combines data from wind tunnel testing in the US with the real world physiological demands of their bodies.
There is also the nutrition side of it. The team would not provide an on record interview on this topic but in a presentation it showed how a rider needs more than 7,000 calories just to get through a Tour de France stage.
This is a hugely complex scientific area. An example of what is expected is what Red Bull rider Florian Lipowitz consumed on the mountainous Stage Six.
He took in 7,573 calories. His basic energy needs for the day were calculated at 2201 calories and the primary training needs were 5,372. In meals alone he got 4,957 calories and during the race, in gels, drinks and race food he took in 2,616 calories.
For stage nine as an example the feeding strategy as they raced through intense heat over 155kms the riders consumed 120 grams of carbohydrates every hour. This was achieved with gels, drinks and chewy carb loaded sports nutrition.
One cornerstone of the feeding process is breakfast. Of a riders Tour de France morning feast there are 1154 calories. There are 200g carbohydrates, 33g of protein, 23g of fat and six grams of fibre.
The types of food consumed are: rice pudding, omelette, honey, cornflakes, bread and pancakes. That is for each rider. Rice pudding has been identified as a greater carb loader than porridge, but some riders still consume that.
When we did have a brief chat with the nutrition experts at Bora they said that controlling body heat will be the key advance in the future. Riders simply perform better with core temperatures kept at closest to normal.
Their advice to amateurs racers back in Ireland: performance in races is dependent on sugar and consuming as much as they can.
Then, during the race, they must take in 120 grams of carbohydrate per hour. After the race there is a dinner cooked by a team chef tailored to their needs. The race across France by day sustained only by the mountain of food.
To give you an idea of how much of a challenge it is to put away the necessary amount of food – for a 50 gram serving of potatoes, there are just eight grams of carbohydrates. The volume is helped by specialist drinks and gels but still it is hard on the body.
Remco and the time trial
Wale, another former rider, works behind the scenes on the performance side of the house.
He worked with Remco Evenepoel on his Tour de France time trial victory. The Belgian is the current World Champion so has the talent. Still, to get the result at the Tour it required a preparation that started in a wind tunnel and a forensic study of the course.
To do this Red Bull uses a Performance Capability Model. The key to this is to study all of the data collected about the rider and the course. This is imput into a simulation programme which produces a result that estimates how the race will likely unfold. They can then tailor how the rider meets the specific demands of the course.
The perfect example of this is their 274 days of planning for the Tour de France time trial stage 16. Carrying out reconnaissance of the course, tailoring the bike with Williams’ skills, and clothing for Evenepoel.
The Belgian also took 80 days away from racing just to focus on his Tour de France preparation.
By late June the team met for one last meeting with Wale, arriving two days before the start of the 26.1km Time Trial. He carried out checks of the course and his final job would be to sit in the car behind Evenepoel and give him details live about the course, like a rally driving co-pilot.
It all came together in the end with Evenepoel securing the win in 32 minutes and 19 seconds, averaging 48.45 km/h. It is understood that there was just eight seconds difference between the simulation and the finishing time.
One key scientific enabler is the involvement of Red Bull’s Formula One scientists. Due to a cap being placed on the spend for motorsport, the Red Bull set-up now uses those F1 data crunchers to analyse the cycling data for three days every week.
We asked Bigham how far can this performance optimisation through science go – is there a cut-off point where they will exhaust the gains.
“All these areas that we’re applying it so quickly, and it’s compounding over time. And that’s why performance is not reaching an asymptote or a plateau. It’s just getting faster and faster and faster.
“Over time, that will slow. But the game then becomes about relative performance again. How can you do it better than your competitors? And it’s just really is to acquire knowledge and action it faster than everybody else,” he said.
That time could well be for 15 years given that Red Bull will fund the team for that period.
On Sunday night in Paris the team gathered near Sacre Coeur in Montmartre for a party to thank the people who supported them throughout the year.
But Bigham and his crew already have eyes on the next big win – the World Championships due to be held in late September and one key area for research will be in making cycling tyres faster.
“It is not to be the best; it is about being better than everybody else,” Bigham said.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Cycle science Dan Bigham Performance science Red Bull Bora Hansgrohe Remco Evenepoel Tour de France world champ