This is great - thanks for posting!

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I found the paragraph below most interesting and them giving his a 4:35 saving over solo, and also in the article they say that Kimetto would be a few min slower in his Berlin 2:02.58. Pacers were around 10x more significant than the pace car.

Given that Kipchoge is capable of running at roughly about 300 W, the difference between undrafted and fully drafted scenarios is around 31W, meaning that he can probably devote an extra 10% of his effort to running faster in the latter case.

Perhaps surprisingly, most of that saving is generated by the close delta formation of pacers around Kipchoge which generates a 28W saving even without the car, which only adds another 3W to the total.
Because power output varies with the cube of velocity it is possible to estimate the amount of time saved in comparison with the undrafted runner. Our calculations suggest that the pacers saved Kipchoge about 4:09 compared with a solo runner, and the pacers and car combination saved him about 4:35.

Yes, but the CFD shows just how much the pacers were in turn drafting the car, which isn't insignificant in allowing them to run at that pace consistently.

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'It never gets easier, you just get crazier.'

From watching the Breaking2 Documentary I noticed that it seemed like they could have done a better job of getting tighter in that formation. Also your link indicates a formation that Kipchoge wasn't in as far as I could tell where there would have been a runner behind him. Not sure what Nike did as obviously this CFD was third-party. Although the lead runners provide the majority of the draft benefit, no doubt the runner behind is reducing drag as well. It would be interesting to see how much that rider behind accounts for although.

Regardless, the big flapping jerseys didn't seem super aero, nor does the gold chain bouncing around...

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