LOOK’s New T20 Track Bike: Performance Made In France

By Look
Posted on Jan 02, 2020

Look (France) - Press Release: Designed to win. Bike and rider become one.

As a leading technological innovator, LOOK has won the most medals in the history of the summer Olympic Games and has always taken pride in supplying partner federations and athletes with the best equipment on the market.

Trust is an integral part of this history: athletes and federations have faith in LOOK to provide them with the most advanced equipment ever made ; LOOK in turn develops, tests, perfects, and distributes these industry-leading products. The cycling community was witness to the success of this synergy in RIO 2016 and in preceding Olympic Games.

TOKYO 2020 is looking to be no exception, with LOOK’s new T20 Track Bike. A bike that can match the constantly more demanding needs of athletes in strength, speed, and endurance.

LOOK engineers and carbon experts worked tirelessly on this track bike project, focusing on the combined athlete and bike interaction, to set new performance standard on the track.

When carbon shines like gold:

Designed & manufactured by look in partnership with Mitsubishi:

Since LOOK’s beginnings in the world of cycling, at a time when metal was king , the material of choice for the French manufacturer has always been carbon. For over 30 years, LOOK has developed, within its own factories, a unique expertise in the use of carbon fiber and composite materials to build high-performance products.

The 2020 Olympic Games will be held in Tokyo and LOOK is honored to have been chosen by the Japanese company MITSUBISHI to jointly develop unique materials and processes with them. The carbon prepregs, the “raw material” for the frame, have been co-developed in a LOOK-MITSUBISHI partnership.

Made in France:

Nevers - Burgundy:

LOOK imagined, designed, prototyped, tested and produced the T20 in their workshops in Nevers, France. The T20 was born from a cutting-edge development process implemented to create the most advanced performance bike we have ever produced.

French athletes will be proud to ride the "Made in France" T20 in Tokyo.

The bike does half the work:

We leave the other half to the athlete:

Of all Olympic cycling disciplines - road, TT, track, MTB, BMX - track bikes are the ones that will record the highest average speeds of all the bikes ridden during the Olympic Games. Aerodynamics are absolutely key.

At LOOK, engineers work to achieve a perfect fit between bike and athlete to ensure a power transfer as close as possible to 100%. Engineers work with athletes to optimize every element of the performance employing a variety of cutting edge methods, including analysis of previous prototypes on the track and in wind tunnels, testing and confirming all design iterations in CFD, and additional testing at one of the most advanced wind tunnel centers available.

We can help them by improving the aerodynamic element of the performance equation, and this is what we aim for with every new track product. We use all the tools at our disposal: from analyzing the performance of earlier products on the track and in the wind tunnel, to hours of testing all our design iterations in CFD, to confirming these CFD results and learning more in one of the leading wind tunnels in the industry.

The T20 provides half of the improvement required to keep performing at the highest level from one Olympics to the next:

2 % CdA reduction for bike + rider
29 watts saved to achieve the same speed of 75 km/h
0,6 km/h speed improvement with the same power

Harmonizing frame and wheels:

LOOK + CORIMA: the perfect combo:

Different rear triangle configurations were tested in the wind tunnel on a modular frame prototype to confirm analysis results of frame & rear wheel interaction, during rear wheel motion.

LOOK is also able to provide athletes with thorough feedback (from tests conducted in two different wind tunnels) on the performance of CORIMA wheels with the T20 frame. Track CORIMA wheels are the best in class on the market and perform even better when combined with the LOOK T20 bike.

Aerodynamic thru axles were introduced for the front wheel on the R96 bike at the Rio Olympics Games. For Tokyo, both front and rear wheels will now receive the same upgrade when the T20 is mounted with CORIMA wheels.

Even lighter and stiffer:

UCI limit of 6,8 kg is achieved:

The impressive power output of a track athlete requires bikes of a different kind, able to transfer the full power on the wooden track. This is what track bikes are created for, and our LOOK’s expertise in this area is extensive.

LOOK provides track athletes with the tools to perform at the highest level by achieving maximum stiffness necessary for high speeds on the smoothest of cycling surfaces, the wooden track.

Aerodynamics and stiffness are critical, yet we must never forget that many track races are won from a standing start. This is why stiffness-to-weight ratio is a primary concern of both LOOK and athletes. It is of the utmost importance at every stage of development; from the design of the parts and the production processes, the laying up of each carbon element, a work of art that can impact the bike’s weight by a mere few grams.