I'm inclined to think they may have used 25c. Enve does best with 25c while DT/SwissSide does best with with 23c. If they used 23c, then kudos to Enve

I think that would slow even Fabian Cancellara down.

The data in the white paper is much more interesting than the single cherry-picked chart in the article.

The deeper wheels are the only one where in the weighted averages performance at high yaw dominated the results so that the wheels that did not perform best at low yaw won.

In both the shallower wheel sizes and both 23c and 25c tires the roval wheels won and the enves a close second. Both those wheels were clear winners at low yaw and high yaw.

Also, while not listed on the same chart together, the clx64 essentially ties the deeper hunt 82 with a 23c tire and beats it with a 25c tire making it clearly the fastest wheel.in the test. It's faster, shallower (better in crosswinds) and lighter...

I was surprised to see the clx 64 do a little better with the 25c tires because I measured them to be wider than the rim on my set. But that may have been a gp4000s2 I can't remember.... I'll have to revisit my tire choice.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
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I am always curious, why does no test ever throw in a china carbon wheel for comparison? Or has one ever been analyzed? My thinking is that they would be very close to these big name companies, and would discredit their higher prices by a lot. Anyone know?

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- Jordan

My Strava

I think you answered your own question.

From what I understand, tire choice is very important when it comes to the aerodynamics of a wheel when you start trying to figure out which is the best due to the interactions of the air with the tire/wheel boundary. Granted the GP5k is a pretty standard tire, but still, I would love to see some data like this done with some different tires and see how the results change.

1 additional tire essentially doubles the cost of aero testing. 2 additional triples it. Etc.

Indeed. The Hunts are only the best wheel above -11 and +13 yaw according to their chart.

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29 years and counting

In this case I think Hunt is aiming to be cheap carbon point of comparison. Like Flo and Swiss Side (at least originally), Hunt is using the direct to consumer approach to produce wheels that are nearly as good as the top dogs at a fraction of the price. And to be clear their wheels are a lot cheaper than the competitors they put themselves up against. I have no objections to this approach but I think the danger for the company is to focus too much on performance and not enough on price. If I were Hunt I would have tested box section rims and then done a plot of £/watt saved at 45km/hr. This would be where they would shine especially if they would have included an offering from Lightweight.

I also find it humorous that at the beginning of the paper they talk about how their new wheels are optimized aerodynamically to work with 25c tires and all three of their wheels performed better with 23c tires. Though the difference is small enough to hardly matter from an aero perspective that the 25c (at least in the gp5000) is probably the right choice due to rolling resistance.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

 

At approx 1700 US per set, the Hunt's aren't exactly cheap. I'm not sure why anyone would buy them over a set of HED's that can typically be found on sale for much cheaper. And even if the Hunts were the same price, they are virtually unknown and will have a horrible resale value.

While Enve claims the 25c does best, the old aero shootout we did would seem to indicate otherwise, at least with the tire we (I) selected.

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Personally, I'm still always amazed at low yaw how freaking close pretty good 60's are to more okay 80's. Sure, 3w or so could make or break it.........but dang. You could screw that just by picking a 25 or 23 incorrectly!

To no one in particular, has there been any recent testing that also included an H3 trispoke?? Either an older model, or the newer H3+?
Always seems to be some pretty standard 'assumptions' about them (tire selection, wide forks, low yaw, etc), but very few actual wind tunnel tests compared to deep dish wheels?

For sure tire selection is VERY important! Some brands are less susceptible to poor tire selection than others.

3w well for testing purposes it's HUGE especially since tunnels error is <1w.

In real life though & ymmv, I sort of think that the 2-3w range is noise as much as difference. Now am I going to select something that is 3w faster from tunnel testing? Absolutely 2w? IDK, let me think and it also depends what part of the human/bike machine that 2w comes from.

Do I expect 3w difference in the real world when you've got vehicle traffic in both directions on a lot of courses, other riders, you're looking around, cornering etc? Not at all, maybe half that.

On the other hand a 3w reduction here and there and now you're talking about real speed. Insert Ricky Bobby analogy

Nothing in this makes me think I need to ditch my fleet of HED wheels

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Tom, I know this is likely answered before, but is enve's claim on the newer SES rims that 25 works best an absolute measirement? Or 25mm on the Gp4000? Only reason I'm asking is that the bike I have on the way has specced enve disc SES wheels but comes standard with Gp4000 25 tires, while I know the Gp4000 run large.

Should I be choosing 25mm gp5000 going forward? Or something that is slightly larger than 25mm?

I think its also important to note that the the Roval 50 series was tested as CL and Not CLX which has the aero spokes...this would have most likely offered a strong differentiator from the "pack"...The 64 was the CLX

Does anyone find it funny that they named their wheels “the aerodynamicist”?

Maurice

Choose the 5000s because the reduction in rolling resistance over the 4000 will be more than any aero penalty.

First off, I would not base a couple of wind tunnel tests we did as the holy grail. If there is anything I learned from the second time at the tunnel with Brian and Heath (they helped with the actual protocol), it is that wow, small changes with tires (think heating up of the tire and slightly expanded tire via increased pressure) can cause pretty drastic changes. I think part of why I wanted to do it was because of transparency. I always admired industry white papers. What I would have liked to see when Enve, or anyone for that matter, makes claims is to show the data. Show how many runs and what they had to do to make something true. Was the 23mm inflated to 120 psi but the 25mm at 60 psi?

At the end of the day unless your livelihood is made racing I would say go with whatever gives you the most confidence. The 25mm is still a fine choice and who knows, when you factor in the fork, and your PSI, and the tire, and rolling resistance, and handling, well, it maybe be the fastest option.

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The CL doesn't have aero spokes? Are you sure about that? Did they make a production change at some point. I thought the only difference between the CL and CLX was the ceramic bearings.

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Absolutely positive. I designed them ;)

CL to CLX is ceramic bearings and aero spokes for this generation of Roval Road (32/50/64)

Good point.

To add to that: it seems to me that the difference between most comparable wheels is probably lower than the variance introduced by testing protocols, wind tunnel accuracy, etc. - that's my take-away from looking at various aero tests where one brand is sometimes better in one test, and poorer in another: but not by much.

And not to refer too much to everyone's favorite maker of BB brackets and aerodynamics expert, but Hambini did have a good point that real world conditions (gusty) add a level of variation to performance that cannot really be replicated in the steady state flow of a wind tunnel. For sure, I would guess that the error margin introduced by this would be an order of magnitude higher than the vanishingly small difference between 2 wheels of more or less similar rim size and shape.

At this point, I have decided not to obsess about aerodynamic differences between various brands too much, but to focus on other attributes like stiffness, weight and price. Oh yeah, and how well the logos match my bike (the MOST important thing, of course).

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Those who are slower than me suck.
Those who are faster than me dope

It would be interesting to take the hunt data, and see iff/how the pecking order changes in non steady state. It would be a dirty way to see how comparable performance is in each protocol.