Originally Posted by
Bisexcycle
I imagine in a time trial pursuit the black line is the best line.
for mass start racing when we are in the turns, would being a little inside (left) of the rider give me more of a draft than following their exact line?
I'm no pro track rider but I imagine that being to the left isn't ideal. This is for two reasons. First, if you are down toward the sprinter's lane, you cannot pass on the inside of the rider in front if they are in the sprinter's lane. So the default pass, if the rider in front is in the sprinter's lane, is to pass to their right. (However, my understanding is that if they're not in the sprinter's lane, and you are in the sprinter's lane and start going past them, they can't move down to block you.)
The other is that generally riders will ride up the track (aka swerve right) if there's something happening like a crash. This allows you to use the banking to scrub off speed. Also, if people are crashing, people and bikes especially tend to slid down the banking. If you're to the left of the wheel in front of you, you've boxed yourself in. You don't have any place to go, or if you go onto the blue band you're not scrubbing off speed. And if there's a crash/something that happened in front of you, and you're still rolling at the bottom of the track, bikes and stuff will slide down toward you.
Ironically I would think that it would be in a team pursuit that you'd want to be a bit to the left. This way you can be close to overlapped and not risk getting taken out when your teammate swings up the track. I've never done a team pursuit but rolling along in a warm up line, I'd edge up a bit on the left side in preparation for taking a pull. If you watch team sprints the rider about to do the next stint will come up and overlap to the left just before the pulling rider moves right.