Remco Evenepoel wore a new cutaway visor in the Critérium du Dauphiné time trial - here's the simple reason why

Eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed something peculiar about Remco Evenepoel's helmet in Wednesday's Critérium du Dauphiné time trial.

Barrelling to the stage victory and race lead, the world champion had a new cutaway visor, carved out in front of his eyes, fitted to his Specialized S-Works TT5 lid.

The design appeared novel – was it a new innovation, a special aero hack? According to Soudal Quick-Step's helmet provider, the answer was more elementary than that.

"It's quite simple," a Specialized representative told Cycling Weekly on Thursday morning. "While in the [time trial] position, the previous visor was touching his hands and wrists. With the new one he can get his head lower without touching his hands or wrists. Simple."

According to Cycling Weekly's in-house aero and time trial expert, Michael Hutchinson, the design is a "really neat solution". Still, he added, the contact issue with Evenepoel's hands was likely to be a smaller part of a wider aero fix.

"Clearly there's no way they just made this random shaped visor without testing it," Hutchinson said, "so you've got to accept that everything in that decision is aerodynamically driven.

"I think it's not so much that it was touching his hands – if that was the perfect position and that's what they tested and wanted then he would just have let the old visor bump off his forearms – it's not going to be that annoying. Clearly they just want him to be able to get his head slightly lower."

The Specialized time trial helmet used by both Soudal Quick-Step and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe was initially released with a much larger visor, before a smaller one was used by both teams at various points in the last year. Hutchinson surmised that the new design used by Evenepoel was likely a balance between the two.

He said: "They're trying to have the best of both worlds by trying to have as much of the aerodynamic visor that they can, while also getting the top of his head down. So when they say it's just because the visor was hitting his hands and it's annoying, I'm not terribly cynical about that, I think it clearly was part of the issue."

Flagged on Instagram by Cyclingspy, the new visor appears to be available for purchase on the Specialized website for $449 (£330).

One potential drawback to the deep cutaway design could be a lack of eye protection, although, according to Hutchinson, this is unlikely to be an issue.

"Bear in mind, a lot of the time he's going to have his head right down, because they'll have cut that visor as close to the shape of his forearms as they can, so there won't be a very big gap there," he said. "He'll be protected by his arms as well, but it wouldn't be quite the same protection and optical performance as a full visor."

Interestingly, Hutchinson added that he had recently spent time in a wind tunnel with a rider using the same Specialized helmet with the larger visor, "and the visor was on their forearms".

"But I think that's one of the reasons it can be a good helmet, because for a lot of riders, that's a really good marker to keep your head nice and low, but it's annoying if you get a rough piece of road as you start to bump against the visor," he said.

"I think doing this makes complete sense. I wouldn't find it hard to believe that it could be gaining three or four watts, over the other one. Yesterday's time trial obviously had a hill in it, but if it was kind of a flat and straight, fast TT then it could maybe be as much as three or four seconds, something like that."

Whether it was down to the visor or not, Tuesday's ride brought Evenepoel a yellow jersey and 49 seconds over his GC rival Tadej Pogačar. Expect to see him using a similar set-up at the Tour de France next month.