Originally Posted by
davei1980
You are mistaken - the benefits of wider tires apply to every riding surface except for velodromes. Wider tires allow for better traction, grip, whatever you want to call it, all other things being equal (rubber compound etc). The research is out there which supports this position. Everyone is just afraid of showing up on to their Saturday AM group ride with a non-conforming bike.
BTW efficiency just means you lose fewer watts or however you want to measure input because of vibration dampening.
Please stop misleading the OP with poor, outdated information as it relates to relatively narrow tires.
I'm afraid you really don't know what you're talking about. You don't understand traction, grip, and rubber.
Please go here for a simple explanation of grip:
Friction Formula
"contact patch size" doesn't come into the equation of grip, it's in fact all dependent on the frictional coefficient of the rubber.
Somtimes, intuitions can get you into trouble. Here's something to think about friction and grip.
Let us suppose that we're sliding a square block of ice across the floor. The block of ice has certain contact-patch area with the floor.
Now, suppose we cut the block of ice into 2 halves so now that each half has 1/2 the contact-patch area of the original block.
Question: so do the 2 smaller blocks have less friction grip than the original larger block? The answer is no. All three blocks have exactly the same frictional grip. In other words, grip does not depend on the size of the contact-patch at all.
Now, there are reason why you'd want to use a larger tire (for traction, longevity, etc), but "larger contact patch gives better grip" is not one of them. I'm merely pointing out your false fact that you seem to hell bent on embracing, and doing the community a disservice. I hope you get this.