Did anyone see Jan or Micks front wheel ? That looked like virtually a standard road wheel. Scarily I wonder how much faster Jan would have gone he’d run that Mavic IO he used to have. Incidentally with a predominate head or tail wind during the ITT he could have got away with it…maybe.
Bryce.
Are you sure the Mavic would be faster?
Aerodynamics aren’t the only thing that determine whether a wheel is fast.
Only on paper but the point is that many modern aero wheels would have been. I’m surprised they opted for such as shallow front wheel. Honchar went with a slightly deeper section. Maybe the wind put people off but then plenty of others opted for something faster with no obvious handling problems.
With respect, I’m not sure you’re right.
My understand (from testing done by UK fluid dynamics specialists for a particular athlete) is that one of the reasons deep-spoke aero wheels (Mavic 5, Corima 4, Hed 3) is that the disturbances the large ‘spoke’ causes as it passes between the forks actually serves to slow the wheel’s rotation slightly. In addition, the overall aero shape of some wheels has been far less effective when they have tires on, and even different when they have narrow as opposed to wider tires. Field and track testing for the same athlete came back with two wheels that were faster in real conditions by a big enough margin to be worth picking for preference.
Neither was a wide spoked or particularly deep-section aero wheel. But both had very thin, very narrow, and very few, bladed spokes and very nice bearings.
Thats really interesting ! Do you have any links or further info on this info ? I’m pretty open minded to anything that challenges the assumed norm.
No links, unfortunately. Instead this comes from a personal friend who happens to spend a considerable amount of his life winning UK time-trial championships and has recently spent considerable time perfecting a more aero bike and bars with his sponsors. The specifics are his to share, not mine.
Sorry.
Thats understandable. I guess that explains why Michael always used that Rolf Vector front wheel !!! I like his new USE bars incidentally, very innovative.
BINGO!
He’s using a Reynolds wheel, now. That should tell you something else…
I don’t think there’s a part of his kit that hasn’t been frighteningly rigorously tested (except possibly his sunglasses).
So I notice. Mind you i never realise Michael had seen wind tunnel time ? I assume he probably has done a lot more on the Velodrome to check equipment although if aero efficiency really was the name of the game he could do marginally (and I do mean marginally) better than the Omega frame he has. That said it looks very nice and damn comfortable.
Marginally better, perhaps, but when you’re a pro you go where the offers are.
You should see the new Omega up close, though. It’s very much narrower and more aero than you might expect and (if I recall correctly, we don’t actually spend out ENTIRE time discussing bikes) was designed based on fluid dynamics data.
But you are right about a lot of the other testing.
As Kraig Willet would say, “Faster is faster”.
is that the disturbances the large ‘spoke’ causes as it passes between the forks actually serves to slow the wheel’s rotation slightly.
That’s the second time I’ve heard this mentioned. The first was in relation to Xentis wheels - apparently the ‘spokes’ are angled to reduce/get rid of this problem.
No that would depend on what criteria you use to measure fastness in the test. For example the fastest/most aero bike with no rider is not always a fastest/most aero bike when you put a rider on top. And because different riders are different shapes and ride in different positions etc etc, the fastest bike+rider may vary from rider to rider.
Did you also notice Jan’s position on the bike. He’s higher in the front than previously, or so it appears to me. He’s more “Lance like”, referring to the higher position that Lance rode last year.
Yes I did. His arms don’t appear as savagely downward as usual and both he and Honchar had much less upper body motion than they used to. Interesting…
That is not why the Xentis “spokes” are angled.
They are angled because the testing has shown that the airfoil sections have improved aerodynamics as yaw angle increases. Look at the wind-tunnel data on the HED3, for example. So Xentis designed their wheels with two of the “spokes” at 10* yaw (left) and two at 10* yaw (right). This makes the wheel fast straight ahead, but the problem is that it messes up as you get crosswinds, which is why the Xentis is one of the few aero wheels that performs worse in a crosswind.
Any of the cabon-spoked wheels will experience these pressure “blips” as the spokes through the fork; this is one of the major things that Oval Concepts and Blackwell forks (which have the slots) are supposed to help with.
Personally, I think it’s another good reason to stick to deep-section carbon rims.
Before anyone gets too excited about T-Mobile’s equipment selection, let’s remember that this is a team that put Jan Ullrich’s Xentis on BACKWARDS…
“As Kraig Willet would say, “Faster is faster”.”
That’s it. Bingo!
Only on ST would the results and choices made by the absolute best Time Trialers in the world be questioned.
Who cares what kind of gear Jan used. He won! Faster IS faster! As for Rogers, perhaps he had an off day. Also, his best TT performances have not come in three week tours to my knowledge, but stand-alone ITT’s.
Finally, Jan and just about everyone associated with T-Mobile has said that they have no goals for the Giro other than for their key Tour de France riders to get race fit. Seems to be working very well.
Fleck
“Any of the cabon-spoked wheels will experience these pressure “blips” as the spokes through the fork; this is one of the major things that Oval Concepts and Blackwell forks (which have the slots) are supposed to help with.”
From what I’ve heard and read, this gets at the bigger point. while there does seem to be the previously mentioned ‘pressure blip’ as a carbon spoked wheel passes through the fork, this is normally associated with an aero wheel used with a standard fork. This was especially prevalent before everyone started making aero forks specifically with aero wheels in mind (think specialized trispoke with Kestrel EMS forks).
It’s my impression that the new aero forks greatly reduce this, if not eliminate it.
I thought it was the T-Mobile team that chose the wheel, and the mechanic that put it on backwards …
Except that the tests I know of used an aero fork and a variety of wheels, and still resulted in a noticeably better result for the wheels with minimal bladed spokes.
Add to that the fact that most aero forks aren’t really very aero with or without a wheel.