INEOS Grenadiers mechanic on Tom Pidcock's bike position: "Tom isn't very advanced. In fact, he is the least advanced of our riders"

At first glance Tom Pidcock's position seems quite advanced. Almost like a mountain biker. But when bici.pro asked INEOS Grenadiers' long-time mechanic Matteo Cornacchione, they learnt it's not quite as advanced as it may have seemed. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

"In reality, Tom isn't very advanced. In fact, he is the least advanced of our riders. He has 9 centimeters of saddle setback. I don't think he inherited anything specific from mountain biking, for this aspect he refers a lot to Kurt Bogaerts, his coach and mentor whom he follows in everything," the Italian mechanic said in an interview with the Italian news outlet. "For example, he uses the normal seat post and when I say normal I mean the rear one and not the straight one. If anything, he inherited the attention to tire pressures from the crossers and bikers."

How does that show? "He works a lot at it and has a crazy sensitivity. He really does a lot of testing with the tyres. For example, before Strade Bianche he made us make several changes and we talk about adjustments of increasing or decreasing by 0.1-0.2 bar. Sometimes we ask him: 'Tom, what do you intend to achieve by so little adjusting?'. But he definitely feels it."

Additionally, Pidcock likes to experiment with the cranks. "He's doing some tests with the shorter ones. Both on the road and in time trial tests, he tested the 165 millimeters. In the time trial he even used the 160. At Tirreno, for example, he had a particular setup with the 68-tooth chainring and 160mm cranks. The chainring was almost larger than the crank! But it's nice, because Pidcock is very technical and he wants to try everything."