It’s the Plasma RC TT in the pics you see here, and it replaces the Plasma 5 TT. There are three things Scott wants us to know: It’s the fastest Plasma they’ve yet made; it’s extremely adjustable; and it’s not just for triathletes.

Let’s unpack these themes but first, about the price: I have seen published prices of circa $8,000 for the frameset and that’s how you buy it: frame only. While this might cause you to roll your eyes there are two kinds of Slowtwitch readers I’ve identified over my 20-plus years of writing for you all: Those who loudly complain of how much a thing costs; and those who quietly buy it.

So, is there a market for this bike at this price? You bet, if it’s the right product. Is it the right product?

Let’s first discuss the way this frameset is presented and address the statement that it’s not just for triathletes. I’d go further and say this edition of the Plasma is made entirely for TT racers, in particular Scott’s most elite cycling pros. But triathletes will find a lot they like in this bike even if it’s just the platform from which a more tri-useful bike might appear and perhaps it's already here with the Plasma 6.

What does this bike lack if you're an IRONMAN racer? I haven’t yet seen how front hydration would work here. I’m not saying there’s not a hydration strategy available, just, I don’t see it. The second issue revolves around geometry, specifically this bike’s very low stack. These sorts of rideable torpedos we’ve seen in the pro TT events are less desirable for triathletes because of the low pursuit position.

That said, there are 3 available pursuit bars, but I don’t know what they look like. Let’s say one of these pursuit positions is angled up from the stem, so that there isn’t a big drop from pads to pursuits. This would make the bike more tri friendly and while you can't easily see it the Cervelo P3X is like this: a low front end with an available V-like pursuit position. That said, if you look at the illustration below the 3 pursuit bars are not low, medium and high; they're short, medium and long. To me, this says that fore/aft is achieved largely through the choice of pursuit bar and that V-shaped up-angled pursuit is not (yet) made for this frame.

Let’s talk about the cockpit for a minute because Scott operates like Trek in that it closely works with and relies upon its accessories division for peripherals. A Trek Speed Concept uses bars made by Bontrager and Scott relies on its sister brand Syncros. In this case Syncros makes integrated cockpits for road and tri called Syncros Creston IC and that’s what we’ve got here. As we see, it can be adjusted extremely narrow in the armrests and narrower is what we’re beginning to see in tri in the pro ranks.

It can also be adjusted wide, up, down, tilted and so on. Adjustment was a premium in the design of this new Plasma and it’s not hard to see why: At its beginning the Plasma has been one of the least adjustable tri bikes, specifically in fore/aft. The first high end Plasma Premiums had literally no adjustment in the lateral plane, other than moving the pad brackets to fore and aft holes. How far the Plasma has come!

What Scott claims is that the Plasma covers 40k in a time 33sec faster than the prior Plasma for riders who’re traveling at 50 kilometers per hour (31mph). The imperative was to build a bike optimized for riding at 55kph and this is another reason why the new Plasma RC TT is, by design, more of a TT bike than a tri bike.

You might then surmise that this just isn’t a triathlon bike at all – it’s a bike built for Scott’s World Tour teams only. But that’s not exactly true. Here is what Scott claims for this bike: “This is the ultimate time trial and short to mid distance triathlon bike.” So there you have it.

Will there be another bike launched that riffs off this platform, but that integrates what triathletes need for the long haul? The Plasma 6 (the Ultimate Ride version) is closest, but the Syncros front end on this TT bike (more on this below) is new, an as far as I know not available on its tri platforms. There’s a lot to like about this bike but Scott would need to make a different edition of this bike for IRONMAN racers.

A couple of notes about the sub-assemblies. The aerobars are full length forearm and are (to my eye) strikingly like the Aerocoach system, but with an articulating wrist angle. Nice.

We see the bike built up with a Syncros Belcarra saddle. This is the same saddle shape and mold used by Gebiomized for its Stride saddle.

The Stride (mostly) along with a few of these Belcarra saddles, comprised the single most used saddle shape in Kona by the pros.

Finally, about geometry, there are two ways that I describe bike geometry and the parts on the bikes that pertain thereto: above and below the waist. Geometries above the bike’s “waist” (like stack and reach) describe in large part how the bike will fit. Below the waist we see bike metrics like BB drop, chain stay, front center, fork offset, head angle and these largely determine how a bike will handle. Scott says they’ve added about 5mm of trail to the bike and this slows the handling down.

I haven’t ridden a Plasma in a long time but I don’t remember it as being an overquick handler. I won’t know until I ride this new one how I like the bike but I don’t like my tri bikes to be particularly slow handlers because we steer with our body weight on these bikes. When you’re steering with your weight and your shoulders you need a little more time to execute a turn or a line correction. Slow handling tri bikes can be cumbersome to ride, but, it appears that the feedback from the pro riders is that this handling needed softening.

[PHOTOS: Courtesy Scott Sports]