Originally Posted by
MyTi
You are not gaining that much speed in a 2019 orbea $10k usd aero bike versus a cheap aluminum race bike from the late 90s. GCN had a good vid about this..and while there was a very slight gain in performance in that video once they updated the components on that old trek bike....
I really think if they put the aero wheels on the older aluminum trek(and lighter components found on the orbea )it would probably have even been about equal in performance to the 10k USD orbea super bike. But of course they did not want to do that to hurt their sponsors sigh...
its a great video even though by not putting the aero wheels on the trek bike it gave it a big disadvantage. What I would like to see is put the same aero wheels on that trek frame and same component group on the trek that is found on the orbea...
https://youtu.be/facmiPgeMNM
Putting 2k carbon aero rims on the Trek would have defeated the entire purpose of the test, which was to keep the “cheap” bike build under a specific price point. Not sure why these types of videos are surprising to anyone... the aero frame super bike will be faster, but not by much. It’s just logic once you understand how little of your overall drag is caused by the frame, and how marginal the gains are between an aero frame and an oval tube frame. It matters to people who need that extra 2 seconds when they’re in a solo break in a big road race and they’ve achieved their best possible fitness, but not to the rest of us. No new revelations here.