Yesterday Russell caught up with Craig Geater, the mechanic of the Mitchelton-Scott team, meeting them before the team recce of the Paris Roubaix. There Craig talked him through the tweaks they do for Jack Bauer’s bike and some of the prep for Sunday.

“In the past years we used to do a lot of different things for Roubaix, different bikes, different frames, but Mathew Hayman stuffed up that theory when he won and so now everyone just rides the standard bike they ride in every other race.  It’s just the tyres, the gears and cassettes, as it’s a flat race and the gears need to be closer together, but that’s basically it.”

“Jack rides double bar tape most of the time anyway, so that’s not different, but otherwise we have cable ties on the bottle cages to try and stop losing the bottles, which was quite successful in Flanders.”

“Then it’s just the gears – the cassette is 11-25, which is a straighter block, and the front chain rings are 53/44.”

“The whole team are on 28mm tubulars, and we are testing the pressures today, starting at 6 bar, which is a bit high, so we are probably looking at 5.5 to 6 bar.”

“We have a couple of young ones he is training with Matt Hayman here…the ‘half Kiwi-half Aussie’ Rob Stannard is here for the first time, and Callum Scotson. So the last few weeks during the cobbled classics in Belgium Matt has been going out riding with them, showing them the lines and showing them what gears to use where and why. It’s pretty good to have that sort of experience to share. Rob’s done Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders, and now he’s doing Paris Roubaix – all in his first year.”