i asked Jack Mott the same question last year when I was building up my race bike. He says the additional drag using regular bars with clip ons is "not insignificant"

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res, non verba

there is some data here from TriRig http://www.tririg.com/...d_Tunnel_White_Paper

they found ~200g extra drag for the drop bars to around 2 seconds/km

It is noticeable, but not significant especially if you have aero road handlebars.

if you believe the above statement than its (2 sec / kilometer x 90 km) = 180 sec or 3 min....
If dropping 3 min over your race gives you security of handling and comfort, then go for it....
like you said, you're not racing for sheep stations or anything like that.

actually, I'd really like a set of roadie bars on my P3 as I find the base bar is to high for full control.
the base bar position is more akin to the hoods than the drops.... and that's with no spacers.
but that being said, the aerobar position is perfect.

hmmm I'd take that data with a grain of salt.

It looks like it was tested without a rider onboard the bike. Aero drag of arm cups and extensions would likely be very different with hands and arms. Who knows, maybe even the basebars work differently when you consider knees and the rest of the rider in the equation. This is still probably the best data we can have on this subject, however not perfect.

If when you are using the clip ons, you are in the same position as with the tri bar setup, I'd say not much difference. Even if it's like 5 minutes, there are so many more factors that could gain or lose 5 minutes. Where are you in Co? I live in Westminster.

Also, the data is a 44cm drop bar with brifters. Assuming you got a 40cm aero drop bar and if the aerobars had brake levers in the test, I think you'd see the difference come down over 50 grams.

Based on some TT results of power meter wielding friends, we were guessing about 1 minute per 40k penalty for clip ons + road bars vs a decent tt cockpit.

The tri rig data will certainly overstate the difference a little bit - no brakes on the aero cockpits, but still, if you are racing to win, you don't want a bunch of round pipes up in front of your bike.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

My mum thought the same, so she bought HED Corsair bars. There's a flat model and one with drop, which enables the base bar position to be similar to a road-bike's drops. She loves it for technical courses.

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

For a breezy or windy race I would guess the drag is on the high side of these estimates because your apparent yaw angle is going to be pretty high at a 13 hour IM pace. A standard TT bar and levers doesn't have much of a surface area increase from the side whereas the road levers are basically a big rectangle. The Cd of a flat plate is about as bad as it gets.

I can still see why you would like road bars so maybe it is a compromise you are willing to live with. There is a lot to be said for comfort and safety. You could console yourself by really looking at clothing and helmet improvements. You could use this as an excuse to buy one of the fast one piece Tri suits and a P-09. :-)

For others with this issue but have steerer spacers, try replacing them with spacers on top of your base bar instead (see, eg, https://chris-lamb.co.uk/...ing-tt-bike-position)

I've often thought about doing this to my training bike (SC 2.5) and maybe even using said bike in shorter, and more technical races.

I live in Salida. Looks like the trainer will get some use the next few days. Windy in the 30s today.

I agree that one can descend far faster and more aggressively (and more safely) with drop bars and clip-ons vs with traditional aerobars. And there are lots of other advantages of properly set up drop bars. There are triathletes and riders out there, some competing at very high levels, that use set ups like this in races or training, or both. If it helps, here is a photo sampling of similar set-ups. But, yes, drop bars are likely to have a bit more aero drag than that of full aerobars. The question is, how much? Right now, that is hard to know for sure. There are some tests that indicate a loss of only 9 sec per 40k and other tests that seem to indicate more.

The tri rig test was a good attempt at an aero test, but there are some significant issues with the specifics of their test. For one, the drop bars had brake levers on, but oddly none of the aerobars did (except one with fixed levers). Second, the tri rig test compared a very simple and $50 drop bar with some pretty advanced aerobars, many costing in the $1000 range. A better and more fair comparison would have been to use aero drop bars like this or this. Finally, the tri rig test did not have a rider. Any difference that you can detect between handlebar set-ups will likely be greatly or slightly exaggerated on a bike without a rider. Adding a rider to a bike very significantly changes the airflow around the bike and the bars. You can see that in between-the-arms aero bottle tests. Adding a bottle there would add lots of drag on an aero bike without a rider, but adding a bottle there on a bike with a rider seems to reduce drag or has little aero penalty.

Greg @ dsw


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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
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Where is the test that says 9 seconds per 40k? I also run drops but expected it to be about a minute.

If you look at the last 2 lines of data archived here, collected at the Texas A&M wind tunnel, you get about a 9 sec difference (at a somewhat fast 25mph) between equivalent set ups (average drop bar with clip-on vs average base bar with the identical clip-on). The difference between an advanced drop bar and an advanced base bar might be slightly more or slightly less (assuming an identical advanced extension design), but hard to know for sure, as we don't know the exact specifics of this test. But one would think that it is not likely to be ten times this 9 sec number.



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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
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This test, with dummy aboard, shows drag difference of ~40 seconds per 40k between a Vision TriMax and a Syntace aero bar.

Drop bar is going to be even worse.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Interesting data. Got any more info or a link about the test? Who did it? When was it done? What was the set up? Got a link to the paper? What syntace base bar was used? Was it this one? Plus, the syntace extensions have some design characteristics that I think would make them very problematic aerodynamically, so it is hard to know for sure what the numbers would be with an advanced drop bar like, say, the bontrager aero carbon drop bar with well-designed advanced extensions (say, like on the Vision). Difference might be 40 sec, might be more, might be less.



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