Seen several P3's used as road race/criterium bikes.

What I would like from all bike companies:

1. Agree on a standard of wind tunnel testing
2. Come up with a generic ironman course
3. Agree on a bike, you all test against (round tube, aerobars, same position, wheels, components, water bottle placement)
4. Calculate your bikes performance against the standard in seconds on the generic ironman course for 250 Watts of even power

The result would be a list, where everyone could decide, eg:

1. Round Tube bike: 4:55 hours
2. Cervelo P2 - old fork: 4:50 hours
3. Cervelo P2 - new fork: 4:48 hours
4. Cervelo P3 - old: 4:45
5. Cervelo P3 - new: 4:43
6. Cervelo P5 : 4:40

The car industry has done that for a long time, we simply know what "mpg" is and how it is calculated. I want a similar standard for "speed per watt". Currently I can't decide between bikes based on facts, I only can based on believes.

Honestly, can anyone say, in which order a Scott, a Trek a Cervelo P5 and a P3 perform and whats the difference is in minutes, all other things (position + equipement) being equal?

no because wind angle may make a certain bike better than another bike depending on how hard that wind is and what angle its going at. All of those bikes could be fastest depending on the wind on a particular day.

Thats exactly why I propose a normalized course. Lets ride Ironman germany for example, measure the real winds and calculate. It is a model, not reality, but you could easily standardize that model. An example:

25% at 15 degrees
50% at 10 degrees
10% at 5 degrees
15% at 20 degrees

If all agree on a model, we could compare. Of course "mpg" depends on "highway vs. city" but you can normalize those variables to make it comparable

Unfortunately car manufacturers can even game MPG.

Might not the results for each bike vary with a particular rider, i.e., how rider A interacts with a particular bike aerodynamically may be different than rider B due to body size, shape, etc?

So test without a rider or with a normalized dummy.

all you are mentioning as already been done. it s still required a good amount of analysis and knowledge to read the results. But the question you ask have been answered.

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

The automotive industry didn't do this voluntarily! The EPA mandates a particular testing protocol for MPG; AFAIK there's no equivalent government agency that would or could do the same for bikes (nor should there be, IMO).

Bike manufacturers won't agree on a testing standard because the customer's uncertainty means more companies can get in the game of selling bikes.

This is a very strange industry. So I am expected to shell out 6.000+ bucks and do my own research? Yeah, right. I will stay with my 2.000 EUR P2 for longer. If the industry is not convincing me to buy a super bike, I won't. And the only way to convince me, is to give me agreed upon facts.

As long as I don't understand, whether a speed concept or a p5 is faster and by how much over a P2, I will invest my money elsewhere.

Same goes for wheels, I know, that a 808 front should be faster than a H3. But by how much if I use a 20mm tire? The car industry invests a lot of brain to explain their product, if the triathlon industry expects the consumer to do that job, it will attract some, but not all potential customers.

Once again, all the question you asked have been answered clearly. But if you don't want to do research for a 6k investment, it s up to you.

Cervélo stated a while ago

P2 to p5 is 100-150gram difference 10-15 watts....put that in whatever course you want and you got your answer.
That's in the 1.5sec + time saving by km....

How many km will you ride? Can you do math?

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

For me, thats a marketing claim by one individual company. Another company (Trek) also claims to have the fastest bike in the tunnel. The major players (Specialized, Trek, Scott, Cervelo, Felt, Quintana Roo ...) need to come up with a standardized test, that is accepted by all participants. With all those claims, I can't answer the question whether a speed concept or P5 ist faster for me. So if I am willing to pay 6.000+ USD, I won't get the hourse power and CW value of my new car, but rather a statement like "quite a bit faster than the old car and faster than our competitors, but it depends", while the competitors will say "we still have the fastest car in the world".

Why not agree on equipment and on a formula of wind directions and test in a way, that gives comparable results?

Dude, you are asking which is faster a Ferrari (P5) or a Lamborgini (SC). Both are faster than your Honda Civic (P2)...

I don't mean this terribly antagonizing fashion, but put up or shut up. Bike manufacturers are not under any governmental mandate to report their drag according to some standard as car manufacturers are. Sounds like you have a perfectly wide open market to do exactly what you want gathering and presenting data. Exploit it! Sell your standardized compilations and reports. If it's such a good idea, then it should make you good money, no? Maybe you'll change the marketing direction. No one owes you that information.

As of right now, and in the foreseeable future, there's absolutely no reason WHY manufacturers want to standardize their analyses, and I'd suggest it's probably to their best interest that the whole drag data field isn't entirely clear. Released drag information is in marketing's best interest.

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The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

-Albert J. Nock

adal....

you need to EDUCATE YOURSELF

what speed concept test and cervelo test and inside triathlon test say is pretty much the same!!!! None of those 2 bikes is faster than the other one in all condition. one is a crosswind machine, one is a head on machine. You make your pick. But the FACT i give you are back up data from many independant test that show the difference between those bike.

if you were a little better at readying those test, you would realise the complexity of the subject and the amazing job that Cervelo, Trek, Scott, Specialized and a few other company have done to explain and quantify those. There are no claim anymore...they are very reliable data as reliable as saying that my Honda civic as average 30miles/gallon for the past 200 000 miles...so i can say with confidence that a civic is a 30mpg hwy car.....

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

I thought I'd throw a photo in that I took while giving the bike a try this last weekend.

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TheRadsport.com: Online bike magazine.

Hi ALex,

Beautiful bike set up, beautiful photos! Well worth clicking through to see all of them.

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Damon Rinard
Engineering Manager,
CSG Road Engineering Department
Cannondale & GT Bicycles
(ex-Cervelo, ex-Trek, ex-Velomax, ex-Kestrel)

You pretty much have exactly that data available.
The P4, plasma, speed concept, shiv, and P5 have all been tested with a normalized dave zabriskie.

So, go run your math on that.

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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

No, you just go look at the "P4 in the tunnel" article on slowtwitch, and then the P5 white paper. Add the p5 data to the stuff from the slowtwitch article, and then apply your preferrred yaw angle assumptions.

It is free!

But let me help: A P5/Speed concept or other superbike about 60 seconds faster over 40k than a p2, assuming somewhat normal winds, and a flat smoothe course with no turns.

Between the super bikes, the differences are really small. If it were me I might lean P5 if I was thinking my yaw angles tended to be under ~7 most of the time. Otherwise, flip a coin? All great bikes (plasma, both shivs, giant trinity, trek, p5, p3)

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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

Why would someone go for the new P3 when the P5 is only $500 more? I'm sure this has already been answered.

Yes, and the optimal position can even change when a rider switches from one bike to another. So if you want to know for sure, you need to buy all the top bikes and spend many hours in the wind tunnel optimising your position on each bike in turn to see which ends up having the lowest drag in the optimal position for that bike. And then helmets and skinsuits can also affect it, so you can change helmets and your lowest drag may then occur in a different position to before, and a different bike may then give you the lowest drag after re-optimising for each bike.

Well, if the Aduro bar doesn't work for you, then the P5 is only very marginally faster...so you could save $500...in fact the P5 that is only $500 more expensive doesn't come with the Audro anyway.

Also I imagine Dura Ace 11 won't be the only gruppo available for long.

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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

I've been on both the new P3 and P5. I think that the P3 is the ultimate bike for somebody doing an Ironman because it's smoother and more forgiving than the P5, yet still stiff and responsive. If I were doing an Ironman I would pick it over the P5 in a heartbeat. I also had the P3 and P5 at the same time, so I took some photos of them together if you're interested in comparing them aesthetically.

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TheRadsport.com: Online bike magazine.

When comparing the comfort did you use the exact same wheels and tires?

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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

So from the Lava Magazine article they wrote:


"White displayed a chart that indicated the just where in the grand scheme of the industry the P3 falls. “We segmented the super bikes at over $6000 and the rest of the bikes at under $6,000,” White said. Of those, Cervelo claims that the P3 is faster than any bike under $6000. And among the over-$6,000 “superbikes,” White says the new P3 “is better than all but two of them.” One of those bikes, White said, is, of course, the P5."

So is it P5 and the Shiv or the P5 and the SC?