You guys seen this drafting studies?

Here is the full article. But damn, the peleton is so good!
A lot of interesting stuff in this pic.

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The draft is big but it’s not that big. No way it’s 95% behind a bunch. You need to keep in mind it’s not including rolling resistance or gravity in those numbers but they still look too big just for aero savings.

As a dutch, he should be aware that crosswinds matter. The may be less situations with crosswinds, but if they occur, they are decisive. Remember tdf and Pog this year?

The study implied calm wind conditions. It would be interesting to see, if the draft effect of a motobike behind you is compromised or enhanced with a tailwind.

I do remember watching something like aero benefits and they showed a wingtip with some smoke passing over it. At the very end, the vortices swirled around and actually went against the direction of normal wind travel.

So people at the back are being sheltered from the front and being pushed from behind. Kinda.

Although I’m still surprised it’s that much.

It’s a 95% reduction in drag.

Just my two cents… the 95% seems plausible to me…
I have experienced this in big peloton where you almost dont have to pedal to stay in the bunch.

BUT it implies constant speed and that the peloton remains wide. In a race, the peloton move constantly and if your at the back you’ll be penalized by the elastic effect and thus cancelling any drafting benefit. You ar better off in front not having to handle the nasty acceleration!

95% yes but only for the limited time that things remain constant.

They mentioned that having a single rider behind you gives you a 2-3% aero boost, but I really wish they would have figured out what aero boost you would get from having a whole peloton behind you. You know a guy like Tim Declercq is putting out massive Watts at the front, but he’s gotta be getting some decent benefit to drag the whole peloton at 50km/h.

That’s true. But the percent reduction in the peleton is relative to the lead person. So whatever the front person is getting, the guys behind get a certain percentage

From the picture, it looks like when there is a car behind the rider, the rider gets a 14% reduction in drag. So it will be something similar.

PelOton. PelOton. PelOton. PelOton. PelOton. PelOton. PelOton.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

/petpeeve

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Lol. If autocorrect doesn’t fix it, it’s out of my hands. I’m too busy to pay attention to that stuff

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What “grinds my gears”, as Nate would say, is when televised bike races have a camera motorbike in the break either behind or to the side of the rider/s whereas the motorbike back in the main bunch will be in front of them. Surely an unfair advantage. Positioning both in front would be fairer where the race isn’t split to pieces and there are enough camera motorbikes.