MattyK wrote:
My further thoughts to this: at the higher yaw angles, on the road you’d probably be desperately trying to hang on to a steady state condition. More likely you’d be falling in and out of stall as you leaned and countersteered and dealt with gusts continuously. It in other words those high yaw numbers are probably irrelevant.
I'm not sure I agree. It could be highly dependent on the course condition. My n=1 is my local time trial course. It's a square that typically has a significant diagonal crosswind. The wind isn't strong enough to cause handling issues for most, but is certainly strong enough to notice and make it a significant course "feature." Across to Best Bike Split's estimates (the best information I have, not having used an aero stick device yet) , I typically see ~10 degrees yaw the entire way around. Almost no time at 0-9deg yaw (just the turns). And this is at about 29MPH bike speed.
Of course most courses won't be like this. But I think there's danger in looking at averages. There are big differences in drag at high yaw. So even if a course sees, say, a 2-degree "average", if you have a 10-mile leg at 12 degrees it may not be a good idea to over-optimize at 0-5 deg and eat a ton of extra drag for that 10-mile leg.
Because of this I look at the yaw out to 10 degrees, and am willing to sacrifice a little around 0 in order to be close to "best in class" all that way out to higher yaws.