BMC turns up the stiffness dial on the Teammachine

Michelle Arthurs-Brennan took the new design for a week-long spin

- Michelle Arthurs - Brennan

All of BMC’s bikes are ‘machines’. Timemachine, Roadmachine, Teammachine. The latter is the road race bike (road racing is a team sport, after all), and a decade after its inception, it’s had a facelift for 2021.

The new, disc-brake only Teammachine SLR01 is reportedly now six per cent faster (more aero), nine per cent lighter – and a jaw-dropping 20per cent stiffer. It’s also, according to BMC, more compliant. This third stat – 20 per cent stiffer – surprised me. I’ve always considered the SLR01 an extremely stiff bike.

Twenty per cent is a lot. So, what’s been done, and why? And, since I’ve had the bike on test for a week, how has it performed over the first 320km?

More aero

To make the bike more aero, BMC fed its in-house ACE+ software a selection of tube shapes, before validating decisions via further Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) testing. The down tube surface area has been increased, with a Kammtail profile chiming in. This works alongside the ‘Aerocore’ bottle cage design, which also formed part of the previous iteration, but continues to be pretty stand-out in the way it smooths out the cage to frame interface.

The fork profile has been reshaped, taking cues from the Timemachine – with a stealth dropout design and integrated thru-axle nut. There’s space for tyres up to 30mm, too.

Its low weight feels immense on the climbs

The D-shaped Seatpost remains, as does the cable-free ICSCarbon integrated cockpit. On the lower end models, there’s the ICS2 – a tidy aero stem with a separate bar.