Joe Laverick’s TT bike set up for the British National 10

Last weekend, Parcours athlete Joe Laverick took on the National 10 in the North East of England. Although no all going to plan and some bad luck hampering his effort he still put in a great effort. We sat down with him to chat about his epic bike set up, wind tunnel testing and the Parcours wheels he ran...

Talk us through the epic TT set up you raced last weekend? 

My bike is epic, and I spent many an hour deciding the components.

I’m using the base Ribble TT Ultra frame and building from there. Retailing at £999 that thing is a steal. The Parcours Chrono set-up is of course set-up tubeless. I’ve built around a Shimano Ultegra 11 Speed Di2 groupset. The show stopper bit of kit on are the Sync Ergonomics EVO PRO extensions. 3D printed titanium, do I need to say anymore?

Your bike has a rim brake set up, what do you think are the advantages of this? 

The old disc or rim brake debate. You can argue until the cows come home. On a TT bike, I don’t think having disc brakes makes a huge difference. If we were talking technical mountain TTs then maybe, but I’ll only dab my brakes once or twice in the race. Using rim brakes brings a degree of simplicity to the set-up, they’re much easier to work with. It also gives me a huge backlog of equipment to use both what I already have and on the second hand market. Overall, I really don’t see the need for disc brake TT bikes.

What are your first impressions of the Parcours Chrono set up? 

Parcours Chrono set up…I was honestly shocked. Firstly it’s super light, which obviously isn’t a major thing for flat TTs but always helps.

The biggest thing I realised is the handling. I’ve never ever felt that stable riding a deep section and disc. After my first ride I was so surprised I messaged Dov to see how they’d been designed…he then of course pointed me to the white paper which explains all.

What things have you changed in your set up as a result of the wind tunnel testing? 

In the windtunnel I changed a fair few things. Stack height down 10mm, cleats brought in, and a new fancy visor too. The biggest shock was the skinsuit down the front of the skinsuit trick, 8 watts just in that!

What were your aims going into the National 10? 

On a normal year I’d say win or podium, but being realistically I haven’t had the prep time to do that in 2023. I was hoping that I’d have a month of training on the bike and a few races under my belt but as things stand National 10 will be my third ever ride on the bike. I’ve been all over the place racing road and gravel, unfortunately the TT stuff slightly fell on the wayside. I’ll get as aero as possible and pedal hard, where that puts me I’m not too sure.

Do you have any other goals/challenges lined up following the National 10 before the off season?

London Loop, 276km. There’s more to come there.