After getting an email from Darevie (a budget Chinese direct brand) about their race suit and Galibier making a similar-priced one, I started thinking about what sort of difference you’d see between cheap (relatively) suits and really quite expensive ones.
I’d presume the effect would be something like:
normal jersey £ → aero brand jersey £££ → budget suit ££ → posh suit ££££
But it could be that posh jerseys are more tested and refined than budget suits, so you see more gains with an expensive jersey over a non-aero brand full suit. I know jerseys from the aero brands can be more than the entire suit, but the price doesn’t always reflect performance.
The difference really is that, to some degree at least, companies like Darevie don’t really know what they are doing. They are just copying the work of companies like Rule28, without necessarily understanding the work that produced the good.
So it raises the question of whether they actually get it “right”. @Rule28 has mentioned several times that there are many nuances that can significantly impact test results. So does Darevie take those nuances into account?
Based on my limited experience with Darevie, I question it. I ordered one of the aero baselayers / “bras” from them. Given that most Chinese brands tend to size small, I ordered a Sm and a Med. At 5’9” / 175cm, even the Small was a bit big and the Med was laughably big.
So if they can’t get sizing right, are they getting aero right?
That was exactly my thinking and why, despite liking the pattern on Darevie jerseys, I haven’t ordered any since returns aren’t as easy. Socks are all I’d order really for somewhere that isn’t easy to deal with, although the small aero bra does fit me ok (not a phrase I expected to be saying today!).
Galibier is a Euro brand and is consistent in sizing/QC from my experience and is more budget-priced (although not China cheap) so I guess I should have used them as an example! Their suit is less than a Rule28 top but I doubt has gone through all the testing to prove and refine it.
Would be interesting to get it tested with and without an aero base layer to see if you could get most of the performance - which if I’m being honest would prob be enough for my talent level. Although I appreciate it’s prob not the done thing to comment on other brands directly hense the generic “budget” suit comment.
It’s hard to categorically rank them. Performance of clothing can come from a few different areas. I’ll summarise these into:
Materials (fabric choice drag crisis point, air permeability, fibre composition etc. )
Fit (fabric tension, fabric orientation, panel placement, seam placement & type etc.)
Generally there is a universal better or worse for materials - for a target speed, but fit can depend a lot on the end user. It’s why you can get some suits working better on some people than others. Socks, being simpler are more determined by materials but some fit issues still impact choice.
So, a well fitted aero jersey with the best materials could perform v close to a suit on some, but on another rider with a different shape, a suit that fits better with worse materials could be fastest. There is an issue that a jersey will always move and wrinkle over time whereas a suit is kept taught.
Hopefully this makes sense, but it’s one of the many answers in aerodynamics that basically boils down to “it depends…”
What I will say is this, aero testing is costly in terms or time and money, there aren’t many facilities in the world to conduct this research in detail in. It means in the industry it’s not hard to know who’s making the effort to do it. It’s also not worth it for the vast majority of brands, you can market something as ‘aero’ and for most people the look is enough, actual performance doesn’t matter.
If your focused on making cheap kit and find out it’s crap, what have you gained as a company…
One of the biggest aero sock brands on the market don’t publish any data and the ‘ribs’ on their fabric is just printed on. In independent testing we commissioned, as well as on several riders we have personally tested, they perform worse than our aero-ish socks but their customers don’t care.
Unless the brand publish data, it’s basically guaranteed they didn’t test their kit IMO. Sure, people can manipulate data to show what they want, but to do that you need to have at least tested your stuff!
I had just received my socks before you posted this. I had tried them on and while they didn’t seem like they would slide down, I did think that the grippers weren’t as “grippy” as other aero socks I had bought.
Thankfully I saw this before I rode in them and after washing, the grippers were indeed quite grippy. Zero slippage during a 4 hour gravel ride…and I am not known for my large calves, either.
During this last weekends race, stopping at the halfway feed zone was a pretty decisive point in the race between those that rode straight through, stopped quickly, and took their time.
I was in and out in about 1ish minute with my wife swapping out my hydration bladder in my suit while I replaced bottles stuffed some nylons full of ice down my chest & back.
Those with the rule 28 suit, if your race requires swapping bladders, do you have someone to help you swap? Is having it integrated in the suit worth the added time vs hydration pack swapping?
On races requiring more than one bladder, I’m debating using hydration packs to swap as that process is definitely faster. With help, people obviously drop/pickup packs without stopping. Trying to switch an integrated bladder is going to take at least 30-45 seconds longer and could mean losing your group.
Dylan Johnson had a full crew to help him st Unbound….and they were pretty quick at swapping it out.
But practice would be key, I think….if you have one person pull the old bladder out and another sliding the new one in, I think it can be pretty quick.
My gut says you’ll gain more time over the course of a long race than you lose swapping out a bladder…..but that doesn’t factor in the added effort required to potentially having to chase back on.
Yep, there are things I like about the bladder approach, but swapping packs is very quick with little chance of a screw up. I’m dropping my empty pack on the ground before I stop rolling and have a new one on in a few seconds. In my limited experience at unbound (2 years) an extra ~20-30 seconds at a rest stop can be meaningless, or it can cost you a bunch of energy chasing. More likely to be an impact at the first stop where people are still racing hard and trying to drop people. The good thing about unbound is most people have to stop at those aid stations and not everyone does a quick stop (so you usually have someone to ride with even if part of the group gets away).
For 100 mile gravel races these day, I see most people going with a no-stop strategy unless it’s hot. And there is no mercy on the folks who started without the extra water weight, it’s usually full attack at the aid stations. I might risk a pack swap at a race like that (more likely a bottle(s)), but a bladder swap would be pushing it unless you knew others are stopping also.
@Rule28 thank you for doing this thread! This is great info.
Count me as another person that wants a light weight, SPF protection, long sleeve jersey. Even if it’s not got ribbing. I actually bought a long sleeve track suit (no rear pockets!) just for crit races since I have very hairy arms and I don’t want to shave them and it was the only suit option I found at the time that was breathable and long sleeve.
Gravel events often need more liquid so hydration packs are common. These are a bit lumpy so not clean aero, or at least that’s how they look.
Couple of questions/ideas
A thin USWE style pack, how much loss do they produce? Probably not as much as blowing up with no liquids but still.
Sticking with slimline packs, any bonus for making a ghetto version of your suit with bladder by running it under an aero jersey? Is it insane or genius (I know the line between the two is very fine)?
The 2.0 was our 2024 suit. The One shares the same pattern as this suit but in all other respects they’re different.
The One uses much more advanced fabrics on both the torso and the arms. The chamois is also upgraded to Elastic Interface’s top of the line Tri chamois.
The difference between a pack and an integrated suit is not that significant aerodynamically (provided you have the right bladder). The main advantage is comfort - probably more important to most racers than ~2W saving.
Under the suit has disadvantages. A bladder is a lot less secure so it can move and it will be very hard to access to refill.
We just did some extensive testing in the tunnel with it.
A few things that are worth considering with it. Bigger bladders tested faster than smaller ones. (Sample size of 1 but a 3L bladder had the same volume as a 2L one in a backpack)
So effectively you get an extra litre of fluid and slightly better performance too.
I can reassure you. I didn‘t do it. I went with the socks only option.