Just 16 minutes passed between Florian Lipowitz crashing out and his teammate Remco Evenepoel winning stage 16 of the Tour de France.Clad in the world champion’s rainbows, Evenepoel clenched both his fists, beamed a toothy grin, and hugged his soigneur. Tuesday’s stage was a long-term goal. He had no idea of Lipowitz’s condition, his team car opting against telling him because of the risk of panicking their rider.Had he arrived at the tight right-hander with six kilometres to go 60 seconds earlier, he would have seen the German walking gingerly from the course, his collarbone broken, suffering a potential concussion, and on his way to hospital. Before the crash, Lipowitz was on for a career-best time trial performance.Just over two minutes later, Tadej Pogačar negotiated the same corner, his front wheel slipping, the yellow jersey just about keeping himself upright, centimeters from the gutter. He finished 28 seconds behind Evenepoel — handing the Red Bull rider his second successive Tour stage win.Back at the team bus, the high fives and handshakes wore grimaces. This was a bittersweet day for a team that had tightened its grip on second, but lost one of its podium contenders.“We’ve been working closely with Lipo for two years,” says Jonny Wale, Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe’s technical performance manager. “There were watery eyes in the car for two reasons, you know?”Red Bull are the best time-trial team in the world — for one dramatic day, they took The Athletic inside their process.Two days earlier, on Plateau de Solaison, Evenepoel won his first mountain stage at the Tour de France — capitalising on UAE Team Emirates’ indecision to outkick Pogačar and Isaac del Toro.Lipowitz, meanwhile, had finished third in last year’s Tour after a strong third week — and with a route that suited him over the coming days, Red Bull believed they had a chance of a double podium. Early tension between Evenepoel and Lipowitz over their co-leader status, meanwhile, appeared to have dissolved.Remco Evenepoel had been victorious in stage 15 – could he follow it up on stage 16? (David Pintens / BELGA MAG / Belga / AFP via Getty Images)The team celebrated Evenepoel’s stage win with champagne, and the next day, a rest day barbecue for team staff. Evenepoel’s attention, meanwhile, had turned to Tuesday’s individual time trial — a discipline in which he is world champion, Olympic champion, and had secured stage wins in his two previous Tour appearances.A major part of his move to Red Bull last winter was due to the German squad’s investment in the discipline: a department led by head of engineering Dan Bigham and his right-hand man Wale, who leads its implementation on the ground.“People call the time trial the race of truth and all sorts of fancy adjectives,” says Wale, speaking outside Red Bull’s team bus in Évian-les-Bains three hours before Evenepoel’s start time.“It really is on this course, because you have a fast climb from a high power position, and then the top of the climb which is super important in terms of time gained or lost. You still need energy to spend over the top — and then a really technical descent. I mean it’s dangerous maybe.“Then, even if the race was from the bottom of the descent to the finish, you’d still see pretty big time differences. There are headwind sections through this, the turbulence and channeling of the air through these valleys, you can turn right and its still there.”Evenepoel’s nickname is the aero-bullet — so named for his ability to tuck into an aerodynamic position, but still generate a huge amount of power. Larger, draggier riders, who may be able to put out more raw watts, simply do not cut through the wind as effectively.“The more headwind in the time trial, the better it normally is for Remco,” says Red Bull directeur sportif (DS) Patxi Vila.When Evenepoel joined Red Bull last August, the team knew they were getting the best time triallist in the world — but resolved to discover that there was still meat on the bone.“A big part of the first half of the season was about building trust together,” says Wale. “With Remco, this started in October — we did three days in (California’s) Morgan Hill wind tunnel. Traditionally, he had been the driving force for lots of this development, whereas I believe the technical expression we told him was: ‘Shut the f**k up and get back in the wind tunnel’.”The team’s aim was to give Evenepoel options which were tailored to the specific parcours of the time trial in question — three or four different position options, clothing choices, or types of helmet, rather than an identical “cookie-cutter approach” for each effort. For this race, they have what is termed the ‘Tour de France’ package, with changes to the front end of the bike, a different skin suit set-up to the rest of the team.“Do you remember there was a big media thing where Remco’s skin was more aero than aero fabric?” asks Wale. “It’s not, unfortunately. He’s actually a human being, believe it or not.”Remco Evenepoel is one of the most aerodynamic time-triallists the sport has seen (Tim de Waele / Getty Images)Evenepoel has other new technology too: a new Specialized (gear) shift, which he is the first rider to use, while more general improvements in materials have led to ever-lighter bikes in the trade-off between weight and aerodynamics.