After a 15-month tease interval BMC has released for sale the fruit of the Speedmachine project. I’ve been awaiting this with more interest than just about any other bike launch this year because the wide-stance fork legs are a tell. They indicate to me – first – that convention was tossed in favor of a commitment to look afresh look at what makes bikes work and – second – that this might be a systematic approach and I mean that literally: considering the bike as a system. Not the fastest frame. The fastest bike. Which we’ll discuss further below.

I have not seen this bike in the flesh so, obviously, I haven’t ridden it in the flesh. Let’s discuss what we know and can see.

BMC states what it accomplished with the Speedmachine which means these – at least – were the design imperatives:

Making the fastest possible bike, which it did in concert with Red Bull Advanced Technologies (RBAT), similar to the Specialized collaborations with the McLaren Technology Centre. The prototype was launched in May of last year, ridden by Patrik Nilsson at the St. George IRONMAN WC, and I don’t see any difference between that prototype and this finished product. Interesting to me is that drag is a component of speed, yes, but…

“Handling first and foremost” is how BMC ranked its imperatives. This is of course true – it has to be true – because frames aero test (as we have seen) very close one to another at the apex of this industry, but there can be a chasm of difference in how two bikes handle. I have ridden fairly recent tri bike designs that are handling nightmares. If I’m afraid to ride a more aero front wheel in a bike; or I’m afraid to descend at speed because the pursuit position is unstable; I’ll lose a ton of time. “The engineers at BMC’s Impec Lab started this project with the aim of solving a problem,” says BMC about this bike, “how to perfectly align stability, aerodynamics, fit and integration to produce the fastest bike in the world.” Did they achieve this? Perhaps. More below on that.

When I look at this bike I don’t see any obvious divergence from the norm. What I do note is a seat post with a pretty short fore/aft range on the slider, and this makes the seat angle a little more important.

When I calc’d the seat angle just from the image in profile they sent me I got 80°. I haven’t seen an 80° bike since, well, I built one about 35 years ago. Since then the seat angles have moderated to between 76° and 79°, but I’m happy to see 80° because that’s where we ride. And when I did get the geometry charts lo, there it was, 80°, and in the largest size 82.4°! The only thing I’ll state as a warning is that the slider on the seat post – where you can slide the rail grabbing hardware fore and aft, is pretty tight. Narrow. Not a lot of sliding.

That’s fine if you ride a saddle that the pros seem to be riding these days with more frequency, which is a Gebiomized Stride, or Syncros Belcarra, or other sadde that you sit aboard. The ISM saddles you don’t really sit aboard. You sit in front of them, hooking your ischial tuberosities (sit bones) on the twin noses. You have to push that saddle back and I don’t know if you can push it back enough on the seat post hardware of this bike. That said, BMC mentions that there’s a TT and a Tri specific seat post. Which is the post pictured above? I don’t know.

There’s a ton of tire clearance to this bike and wide fork blades (and seat stays) are becoming more the rule than the exception with new tri bike launches. I’m not an aerodynamicist but I play one on the internet. To me, that theme of letting the air flow through the elements of the bikes rather than around the entire frame means the wheel maker is free to make a wheel/tire construct is his or her choice. Take Zipp, for example, that makes its 858 NSW to work specifically best with 28mm tires. I find myself listing tires as imperatives, alongside fit. Just as I won’t buy a bike that doesn’t fit me, I won’t buy a bike (or a wheel) that doesn’t optimize the tires I want to ride. (Which is why so many road bike makers now release products that allow for 30mm and 32mm tires).

And then we read the following about this bike versus the prior Timemachine: “Tire Clearance: Wider tire clearance from 27mm to 30mm. Speedmachine is optimized for 28mm tires, Timemachine disc was optimized for 25mm tires.“ I’m not opining, just reporting! Of course those who follow what I write know that I’m a big fan of 28mm tires and will not anymore ride anything smaller. So, this is music to my ears.

As to other frame features, there’s a “SharkFin” that guides dirty air away from the downtube, and that’s apparently an RBAT idea (the folks at Red Bull’s Formula One braintrust). How is there room for that fin? The typical length of a fork, from crown to dropout, is 374mm on a 700c road wheel. That’s the length on the Timemachine and on just about every other tri bike. The fork length on this new Speedmachine? 391mm (or 392mm depending on size). This is what I might expect to see in a gravel bike. (Remember this as we discuss steering geometry below.)

The cockpit is pretty standard. I don’t know if a third-party made the pursuit bar, but the hardware atop it is Profile Design. That means one could put PD’s 43 ASC extensions on that bike if one wanted to. Those round extensions are the very first things I would choose to ditch. Either the 43 ASCs go on there or I lose the entire front end, put an adapter plate, and on goes a different system entirely (e.g., Drag2Zero or AeroCoach).

There are 3 complete bike models, and they range from $11,000 to – get ready - $23,000. The mid-priced bike is $17,000 (imagine a smiley emoji at my “mid-priced” joke.) For these prices I would have expected the 43 ASC. Perhaps they didn’t spec those extensions because they knew the very first thing an owner would do is put on the front end of his or her choice anyway.

This is designed as a UCI-legal bike and we know this because the bike was ridden stripped of its hydration and storage, viewable through spy pics from World Tour events. (Also, AG2R rider Ben O'Connor comments about this new bike.) Discerning Slowtwitchers noted that it was ridden by at least one pro in triathlons this year (and if you follow that link you’ll see that fellow did what I mentioned earlier up, and put 43 ASC extensions on his bike).

BMC has emphasized handling when talking about the Speedmachine, and it specifically said this: “The all-new Speedmachine was reappraised from the ground up to produce groundbreaking handling characteristics via radical head tube angle, rake and trail dimensions.” That’s interesting because steering geometry (head angle and fork offset) goes a long way in determining how a bike will handle. But I don’t know what that means. Numerically. The geometry chart specifically omits mention of these metrics. Notably omits.

Here is more from BMC: “Thanks to a revolutionary new steering geometry, the BMC Speedmachine provides confidence and predictability previously unheard of in its class.” You got me! I’m interested!

So I hearken back to my imprecise method of calculating angles from the images of the bike in profile and it turned out I got lucky when I calc’d 80° for the seat angle and 80° is what was printed on the geometry chart. When I went through that same exercise on the head angle I got 75° and – yeah – that’s not very typical of tri bikes. Or any bikes. More like 73° for a road bike (74° exceptionally) and 72° for a tri bike. One would assume a correspondingly short fork offset, to keep the trail to a logical number (tri bikes usually have a trail between 59mm and 62mm).

But I just don’t know and I’ve asked repeatedly and have so far gotten nothing. That’s odd, since this was a big part of the narrative of the bike. My rough calc head angle, the fork length, this is all a juicy tease to a geometry geek like me. When I get this steering geometry story I will report on it.

As you see from the above chart the bike excels in a yaw versus BMC’s prior TT bike. I’m not sure I stipulate to the takeaway that BMC ascribes to the results. I don’t know that the data “clearly” shows an increase in stability and smoothness across a yaw. But I do think the chart clearly shows that the bike performs better in a yaw.

BMC reports a 500g weight reduction from the prior Time Machine model and, as you can see, there’s a pretty user-friendly process for frame hydration. Note the tube passing just on the backside of the down tube. Makes it easier to have integrated hydration and to get to and clean the hydration. That’s a 1.2 liter reservoir.

Below is how the bike fits. I love to see symmetric looking charts like this, with some overlap in sizing so that fitters and customers can make decisions not only based on fit but handling (if you can fit aboard more than one size then you make your choice based on handling). Frame stack and reach are not included on the size charts (guys… it’s not that hard to put the necessary metrics on a geometry chart). But I suspect that the frames were built with frame stack and reach as design inputs, as the fit windows of these 3 available frame sizes sit on a gradient.

What I would like – and maybe BMC has or will provide this – is a digital toolbox that shows exactly what the front end config looks like for every 5mm of pad rise and run from the BB. In other words, if my pad x and y are (say) 640mm and 510mm respectively, how exactly do I achieve that with the included bolts and pedestals and so on? Assuming I keep with the Profile Design hardware.

This is a simple bike and I mean that in the best sense. Not a lot of parts. Easy to disassemble for travel. Looks pretty easy to work on though I haven’t assembled this from the ground up (so don’t know what routing a hydraulic line through the pursuit bar or frame is like). But I like simple and I suspect it’s not hard to work on, especially with its wide open design with lots of clearance. Here’s more from BMC about this bike.