Setup and bike are two different things IMO. You can do many things with the setup to improve how the bike works. They have plenty of time to get TP more comfortable/confident on the bike.I mean if the tt bike is slower than competition today, I don't see how it can be as good as competition in 3 weeks, research on materials and components takes a lot of time. They'll have to work on that for next year
If the bike is heavier than other top bikes, a different carbon and/or layup can address that without requiring the R&D of a new bike. You're saying its "slower". Do you mean aerodynamically speaking? I don't know what it looks like to the wind, but that didn't seem to be the problem that we saw on camera this week.
I realize that we can't tell anything by how a bike looks, but the TT1 has been in the wind tunnel a lot so I can't imagine that it isn't pretty slippery.
From May 2022: