The benefit of aero race wheels is that they reduce your overall drag and make you faster. In 2012, I wrote a blog article that discussed how much time you’d save by reducing your drag while traveling at speeds between 1-30mph. In that article I discussed how there is a common misconception that you have to be traveling at a certain speed for race wheels to be of any benefit. The truth is, that is false. In reality, the slower you go, the more time you save over a distance. That’s right, if you were to ride 40km at 30mph you would save less time then if you were to ride 40km at 20mph. While counterintuitive, the best explanation I can give is riding at slower speeds allows you to experience the benefits of reduced drag for a longer period of time since it takes you longer to complete the course.
Since I wrote the first article, we’ve released all of our new wheels and have updated our Net Drag Reduction Value formula based on our Data Collection Project. Today, I wanted to share all of the new time savings charts for each of our new wheels for relative velocities between 1-30mph.
Before We Start
Before we discuss the results, let’s first discuss relative velocity, and the math behind the time savings calculated below.
Relative Velocity
In the original post FLO Cycling – Cycling Wheel Aerodynamics – How Speed, Time, and Power are Affected by Reducing Drag, there is a detailed discussion of the math behind the calculations below. If you are interested please take a look.
FLO Carbon Clincher Wheels
FLO 45 Carbon Clincher – Time Savings between 1-30mph
FLO 60 Carbon Clincher – Time Savings between 1-30mph
FLO 90 Carbon Clincher – Time Savings between 1-30mph
