Phil Williams’s National Road Bike Tt-winning Giant TCR
The bike that was fastest in the new RTTC championship
This is the Giant TCR Advanced SL that Phil Williams (Team Bottrill) rode to victory in the first ever RTTC Road Bike Championship on 28 February. Williams, who was runner-up in the National ‘50’ last year, recorded a time of 52.34 on his road bike on the 25-mile A25/34 course outside Nottingham.
Despite making some key modifications to the Giant, Williams says it was his position that helped him the most: “I’ve never done a TT on a road bike before and so I’ve never really invested in it; it’s more what I’ve learnt from being in a wind tunnel on a time trial bike. So just trying to keep my head as low as possible and to keep the shoulders in as well, and holding it. I knew it was going to be hard on the forearms so I was switching between the tops and the drops. It’s a lot harder to hold than on a TT bike.”
Williams folded his 6ft 5in frame into a tuck that was surprisingly close to a time trial position, and says he went a bit faster than he was expecting, averaging 28.5mph instead of the 28mph for the course that he estimated using the Best Bike Split app.
As for bike optimisations, he swapped his usual 52/36 chainset for a 58t single ring and used electrical tape over the hole where the front mech was. He also switched the bottom bracket for Wheels Mfg ceramic bearings and that was pretty much it.
“I did think about putting some drop bars and a long stem on my TT frame, and I think that’s the way it’s going to go, but I quite like the idea of it just being a pretty standard road bike,” he explains.