styrrell wrote:
Assuming you aren't a complete non starter fitness-wise, success in crits comes down to 2 factors. Reading a race and bike handling. I don't doubt the best bike handlers in the world could out corner anyone on ST on
skinney tires with crappy rubber, but for most of us anything that can give us a bit more cornering confidence and speed is going to overcome the aero advantage of a narrow tire.
Since I started this whole tangent on tire width and handling, I figured I'd respond to this...I wasn't talking about "skinney(sic) tires with crappy rubber". What I was saying is that width is not necessarily mutually exclusive of good handling. There actually are skinny tires WITH
good rubber.
Yes, there are narrow tires that wouldn't give me the best confidence diving into a corner at speed...but, the tires I mentioned above are not amongst them. Seriously, I had zero thoughts of "I sure wish I'd run wider tires so I didn't have to back off in these corners", mostly because...well, I didn't need to ;-)
http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/