Four years ago, a collaboration was announced between Swiss bicycle manufacturer BMC and Red Bull Advanced Technologies, the high-performance engineering arm of Formula One's Oracle Red Bull Racing. The goal of the project was both simple and unfathomably complex: "The fastest race bike in the world."

The goal was to take the technology and tools developed by Red Bull in its pursuit of Formula 1 success and combine them with BMC's expertise in bicycle manufacturing.

Today, the project has borne its first fruit with a prototype time trial bike. Although it has "Speedmachine" printed on the top tube, it does not yet have an official name and is ready to ride. In fact, BMC-sponsored triathlete Patrick Nilsson is scheduled to ride the bike this Saturday at the (COVID-delayed) 2021 Ironman World Championships in St. George, Utah.

Unfortunately, details about the bike are sparse: neither BMC nor Red Bull Advanced Technologies have revealed whether it succeeds in being "the fastest in the world," benchmarked against existing examples of BMC's best time trial bike, the Time Machine TT. There is no comparison, and no data at all.

Despite this, Andy Damerum, Red Bull Advanced Technologies commercial development director, believes the results could be a "game changer."

"We are very proud of what we have accomplished with BMC. We applied Formula One methodology in aerodynamics and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) to the design of the bike, and the result is a potential game changer."

The only details are what can be gleaned from the photos.

The fork appears to have a wider leg stance to allow plenty of room for wind to pass between the fork and the wheel. The crown at the top of the fork is very angular and appears to match the shape and position of the seatstays behind it. Despite the fact that the brand's existing Timemachine TT forks run in front of the head tube, Speedmachine's forks have a more traditional construction. It also appears to feature the hidden dropout design found on the brand's Teammachine SLR.

The frame appears to take the aerodynamic frame design of the brand's Timemachine Road aero bike to the extreme. While the road bike's bottles and cages are designed to help the wind move through the frame, the Speed Machine is given what appears to be a removable storage compartment.

In these photos, the bike is shown with a single front chainring from the SRAM Red eTap AXS groupset, but the bike can obviously be fitted with a front derailleur.

Formula One's input clearly extends to the bike's construction, with Red Bull-branded carbon wheels with flashy red sidewall livery and matching limited edition Pirelli P Zero Race TLR tires.

Throughout the four-year development and prototyping journey, rider input has been key to the project, and BMC ambassador Fabian Cancellara, a four-time time trial world champion and two-time Olympic time trial gold medalist in the Olympic time trial.

"The two worlds of different sports have merged to create something cycling has never seen before," Cancellara said. It was fascinating to be involved in this project from the very beginning and to continue testing the interface between athlete and machine." It was great to be part of the development of a cutting-edge bike with radical principles and the chance to influence its performance from the rider's point of view. The finished prototype is fantastic and I'm looking forward to the next one."

Like Cancellara, David Zurcher, CEO of BMC Switzerland, also sees this as the start of a long-term project. 'High performance is in the DNA of both of us. This prototype is the very first F1 bike and must have a huge impact on the future of our racing bikes."

Zurcher may describe this as "the first F1 bike," but this is not the first time the two sports have collided. McLaren is perhaps most closely involved with road cycling, sponsoring Bahrain McLaren (now Bahrain Victorious) for the 2020 season. But McLaren's involvement doesn't stop there, as far back as 2011, when it collaborated with Specialized on the S-Works McLaren Venge. [more recently, Valtteri Bottas, who drove for Mercedes for four years before moving to Alfa Romeo in 2022, supported the launch of the N-Plus Velo13 Mercedes AMG F1 aero road bike in the team colors.

At this time, the bike has not received official approval from the UCI, and BMC has not revealed if that is even the aim of the bike. However, the frame design appears to be relatively restrictive compared to pure time trial frames like the Felt IS 2.0.