I hope I'm not reposting this from a previous thread....
Zipp, Cervelo, CSC make strides at San Diego Wind Tunnel
By Jay Prasuhn
Feb. 19, 2007 -- Just a few days before the start of the Tour of California, former Tour de France champ and CSC team manager Bjarne Riis took three of his team’s top guns to San Diego for aerodynamics testing at the San Diego Wind Tunnel. Aside from enjoying a day off the bike for Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara (current World time trial Champion), Luxembourg’s Frank Schleck (2006 Amstel Gold winner and ’06 Alpe d’Huez Tour de France stage winner) and Spaniard Carlos Sastre, CSC enjoyed the opportunity to work with their two primary equipment sponsors—Zipp and Cervelo. In a sport so steeped in old-world thinking, Riis has seized upon the opportunity to seek out superior product and investigate.
Of course, it helps. CSC won every team time trial on the ProTour last season. Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara won the UCI time trial World Championships last fall. And of course, the market gets to reap the rewards, being made available Cervelo P3Cs and Zipp.
But while it was the first time for Sastre, Cancellara and Schleck at the San Diego Wind Tunnel (in fact, it was the first time the time trial world champ was getting wind tunnel tested—ever), Zipp’s team of five engineers were very familiar with the tunnel’s inner workings. Before Riis and Co. even arrived and a select group of media and insiders were permitted to see the big boys get tested, they were there, fairly alone, with no bikes. Just a collection of nearly 50 wheels; stock Zipp wheels, prototypes and competitors wheels, as well as Zipp’s own new Tangente tires and new prototype tires. We were quite intrigued by the proliferation of discs with bulged applications on the outermost circumference of the disc. (What’s the idea there? We’ll look into it in our May coverage of this testing session).
So Zipp’s Andy Ording, Josh Poertner and the rest of the Indianapolis-based team spent 12-hour days changing wheels, testing against yaws and swapping tires to see the results against other wheel and rim configurations. Then a separate session of wheels with winds toned down from 30 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour—the speed many age grouper will find themselves at in a race.
In fact, while the media always wants to focus on the big names doing position testing in the tunnel, it’s these low-key, no-hype tests that yield you speed in your own race.
Which is what interested us. It’s cool to see the pros prep on how to get fast, but we want to go fast too. The product-only test sessions are a rarity, because so few names actually bring in plastic prototypes created at first from computer fluid renderings. Zipp explained the testing protocol to us, and believe us, theirs is a reason Zipp was selected by CSC as their wheel of choice, not to mention the choice of last year’s two Kona winners, Normann Stadler and Michellie Jones. Never mind the fact that the wheels are created and handbuilt in Indy, not overseas.
The rest of the aero carbon hoops out there? Your guess is as good as mine whether the wheel works, and they’d be hard-pressed to explain their build and testing protocol. The result is a wheel, testing be damned, put under an athlete at the tunnel and declared “wind-tunnel tested.” It may be tested, but proven? If it’s a production product, and is a dog in the tunnel, too late to do anything about it.
“We’ve had a lot of prototypes we thought would be great in the tunnel and have turned out to actually be quite terrible,” Ording says. “It’s important for us to come here and test every possible variable, to make sure it works.”
Of course, they do turn out wheels that are damn fast. We were on hand for a test of a prototype that produced negative drag—that is, it created a slight propulsion effect (about eight watts of assist at a 15-degree yaw).
“It was quite an achievement, and to have it repeat the next day’s test was amazing,” Ording said.
The athletes are resolute.
“The new stuff that comes out from Zipp, from Cervelo, I never had this chance to test these things,” Cancellara said after his testing session concluded. “To see how much faster I can go, that’s the best thing. This is the future of cycling, and the labor they do, they have to do it. Cycling is changing, and every chance you can you have to find places to go better, and they have done that for us.”
http://wardmoya.blogspot.com/
Zipp, Cervelo, CSC make strides at San Diego Wind Tunnel
By Jay Prasuhn
Feb. 19, 2007 -- Just a few days before the start of the Tour of California, former Tour de France champ and CSC team manager Bjarne Riis took three of his team’s top guns to San Diego for aerodynamics testing at the San Diego Wind Tunnel. Aside from enjoying a day off the bike for Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara (current World time trial Champion), Luxembourg’s Frank Schleck (2006 Amstel Gold winner and ’06 Alpe d’Huez Tour de France stage winner) and Spaniard Carlos Sastre, CSC enjoyed the opportunity to work with their two primary equipment sponsors—Zipp and Cervelo. In a sport so steeped in old-world thinking, Riis has seized upon the opportunity to seek out superior product and investigate.
Of course, it helps. CSC won every team time trial on the ProTour last season. Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara won the UCI time trial World Championships last fall. And of course, the market gets to reap the rewards, being made available Cervelo P3Cs and Zipp.
But while it was the first time for Sastre, Cancellara and Schleck at the San Diego Wind Tunnel (in fact, it was the first time the time trial world champ was getting wind tunnel tested—ever), Zipp’s team of five engineers were very familiar with the tunnel’s inner workings. Before Riis and Co. even arrived and a select group of media and insiders were permitted to see the big boys get tested, they were there, fairly alone, with no bikes. Just a collection of nearly 50 wheels; stock Zipp wheels, prototypes and competitors wheels, as well as Zipp’s own new Tangente tires and new prototype tires. We were quite intrigued by the proliferation of discs with bulged applications on the outermost circumference of the disc. (What’s the idea there? We’ll look into it in our May coverage of this testing session).
So Zipp’s Andy Ording, Josh Poertner and the rest of the Indianapolis-based team spent 12-hour days changing wheels, testing against yaws and swapping tires to see the results against other wheel and rim configurations. Then a separate session of wheels with winds toned down from 30 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour—the speed many age grouper will find themselves at in a race.
In fact, while the media always wants to focus on the big names doing position testing in the tunnel, it’s these low-key, no-hype tests that yield you speed in your own race.
Which is what interested us. It’s cool to see the pros prep on how to get fast, but we want to go fast too. The product-only test sessions are a rarity, because so few names actually bring in plastic prototypes created at first from computer fluid renderings. Zipp explained the testing protocol to us, and believe us, theirs is a reason Zipp was selected by CSC as their wheel of choice, not to mention the choice of last year’s two Kona winners, Normann Stadler and Michellie Jones. Never mind the fact that the wheels are created and handbuilt in Indy, not overseas.
The rest of the aero carbon hoops out there? Your guess is as good as mine whether the wheel works, and they’d be hard-pressed to explain their build and testing protocol. The result is a wheel, testing be damned, put under an athlete at the tunnel and declared “wind-tunnel tested.” It may be tested, but proven? If it’s a production product, and is a dog in the tunnel, too late to do anything about it.
“We’ve had a lot of prototypes we thought would be great in the tunnel and have turned out to actually be quite terrible,” Ording says. “It’s important for us to come here and test every possible variable, to make sure it works.”
Of course, they do turn out wheels that are damn fast. We were on hand for a test of a prototype that produced negative drag—that is, it created a slight propulsion effect (about eight watts of assist at a 15-degree yaw).
“It was quite an achievement, and to have it repeat the next day’s test was amazing,” Ording said.
The athletes are resolute.
“The new stuff that comes out from Zipp, from Cervelo, I never had this chance to test these things,” Cancellara said after his testing session concluded. “To see how much faster I can go, that’s the best thing. This is the future of cycling, and the labor they do, they have to do it. Cycling is changing, and every chance you can you have to find places to go better, and they have done that for us.”
http://wardmoya.blogspot.com/