Originally Posted by
carleton
This is awesome.
Here are the images that Dolan tweeted:
Not sure where they got 28.0cm drops from. Prototypes? Team GB bars?
Take Away:
At every speed and on every rider type, narrow wins and more-narrow wins bigger.
This is why I'm a fan of the 33cm Alpinas. They work! For me, my Kilo times in 33cm Alpinas matched or beat my Kilo times in aerobars.
This is one of those situations where they visualized data badly, and by truncating the y-axis, do more to confuse than to clarify. That said, going from 38 to 33 has changes that range from 2.5% drag reduction to 4%. I could think of some better ways to show this... but the story is, that's a ton! And, if we assume that these are representative... more gains to be had with larger people (or rather, smaller people need to go narrower to see proportional gains).
Probably going to stick with my 36cm bars for now, but having used them for a year or two, I really wouldn't be opposed to trying 33-34cm bars.