Originally Posted by
Dave Mayer
Nope - weight trumps everything. When riding in a pack, the weight penalty of a heavy bike, and especially heavy wheels will shed you off the back. Then you can be aero as a bullet, but you are not going to be able to reconnect.
When you are sheltered in the pack, your super aero bike might save you a handful of watts, but then you're coasting along at 25 mph expending what? 100 watts total? Joking with your pals about the movie you saw last night and eating a energy bar...
Why must weight supremacy be true, for you?
Sure aero might not matter all that much in the odd occasion of travelling in a dense pack because of pack dynamics and the tendency to bring the air along too so the net effect is all person's present are drafting eachother to the benefit of all. But, what about all the time a rider spends riding solo? It doesn't matter there either? You have a history of making it sound that way.
There are other aspects of pack dynamics, too. Like the tendency for the socially burdensome to get dropped for reasons not related to rim weight. What is your time riding solo v/s dense pack riding ratio?
You are seriously telling me (and the world) that drag coefficients just don't matter? That's amazing because because it literally means airplanes, bicycles, rocket ships, bullet trains, and cars could be shaped like barn doors, and it just wouldn't matter. Judging by the effort of the worlds engineers, clearly
they feel
something there matters to the operation of their vehicle. If not the minimization of drag coefficients, then what? Is that something
style? Artistic expression? Shameful attempts to drive up cost?
Please explain your assertion.