#pink. Give the wheels to WT riders who will demand high pressures that ‘feel’ fast and then let them ride for 3 weeks though France…..
I admit the last bit isn’t fully delivered in this approach.
Thanks a lot for article share - Ronan is fun and this was a good read. The article nor the comments seem to discuss the absence of or the unknow use of sealant (brand?) in this test?
I think interpreting the results or what is being said / still open to investigation pretty confusing. I think Jan Heine with Compass Tires / Bicycle Quarterly / Rene Herse has done the same thing a decade ago with roll-down tests and rumble strips. Personally, I found those tests much more understandable, and the results very clear….I’ll add conclusive as well, but I also know he sells tires so.
Somehow even as a subscriber I’d missed that. So thanks for sharing.
The temperature section was actually the bit that fascinated me as I suspect it explains why I’m such a vittoria fanboy and don’t ‘enjoy’ the feel of the Contis. It’s because so much of my riding is in temps under that 60 degrees as I do so much early morning and through winter. To me it makes sense that the different construction plays into the vittoria approach in those colder settings, but means the contis perform more comparatively as the temp goes up.
I’ve tended to do back to back testing or had forced changes to non preferred tyres in the off season when it’s 10deg C or below and I say ‘urgh, hate them, feels really stiff’.
Remember that when Enve launched its first set of hookless wheels, one of their claims was that they allowed a smoother transition from the lip of the rim sidewall to the tire. Josh Poertner said, starting around 2:30, that he had not observed this at all in testing. He even said that hookless often made the tire measure a bit wider than it otherwise would, and all else equal this could be a small aero penalty, not a gain.
We do know that hookless should be cheaper to manufacture. Simpler mould, so easier to maintain tolerances, which means fewer scrapped rims. If hookless were also a performance gain, wouldn’t we see more hookless rims? I mean, innumerable athletes would be OK trading off a narrower safety margin for an aero benefit plus no extra cost, maybe even a cheaper wheel.
Instead, we are seeing that narrower margin, no appreciable decline in price, plus no performance gain.