Allaphilipe's round non aero bars

Or did not finished because of the handling. Point is there’s a lot going on and an aero bar may or may not make a or any difference.

It’s vague but I’m not sure what else you’d use to market it. ‘This handlebar reduces your drag coefficient by 2%’ is more technically accurate but probably harder to sell. It makes more sense to me than the x time over a 40k. At least you can scale it down to whatever speed you’re concerned with. 7W at 35 mph should be around 2.5 at 25 mph.

Either way, him not using them is either bc he doesn’t have a sponsorship deal or him/ his team did not think they would have a meaningful difference on his chances of victory.

Time trialing is it’s own beast, but with road racing tactics and race instincts like we saw him execute are most important. He obv did not need a margin gain to win this race bc he put like a minute into them.
I mean to say he didn’t win by a fraction of a second in a sprint where victory could be swayed in your favor by a 0.001% improvement. I think the situations where these things matter are far few and in between outside of time trialing

He’s a rider, that whilst often finishes solo, spends almost all of his time hidden at the very back/behind his team.

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Drag is drag. Any time you’re on the front or off the front (or back) it’s going to affect you, time trial or otherwise.

Marginal gains are marginal; the majority of the time they’re not going to matter.

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I meant to quote his other rational conclusion!

Definitely the latter! He rides Specialized so would have no issue using the Aerofly bars that bike would normally come with. And the bars he did ride were made by Pro (think they’re the Vibe SL Compact) who also make aero bars. So a deliberate decision to not use aero bars. Those are Pro’s lightest bars so maybe that was a consideration, though pros don’t really have a problem getting their bikes down to the UCI weight.

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It is a Specialized bike and kit…so the sponsorship is there. It is most likely just a personal choice based on comfort.

Personally, I find round bars to be incredibly uncomfortable now…hate riding them after spending a lot of time on flat, or flat-ish, bar tops.

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Sponsorships are not a problem at DQS :rofl:

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Yep. Second this.

Did a road bike TTT recently. Did longer pulls, more often, averaged was 10&20w less power then team mates.

Round narrow bars, so imagine my savings if I had aero narrow bars…

It is also known that rider does not own a tri bike. She primarily races draft legal where a TT bike isn’t allowed. She does not have a bike sponsor and simply didn’t own a TT bike. She was offered one and reportedly didn’t feel comfortable racing something she hadn’t trained properly on.

I’m imagining a very small number. Like less than 1/4 of a second/Km @30mph which I think is a good way to think of this stuff. Even 10 seconds over 40Km seems too much. IDk though. Dr. Chung or someone who really knows this stuff hopefully will chime in and set us straight. IMHO Allaphilipe chose his bar based on comfort.

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I always thought bars were in the 3-5 range. I looked up Zipp and they claim 6.3 watts. Knowing Zipp, they are measuring at 15 degrees of yaw. When you get to a real world 0-5 degrees yaw you are probably talking 1-2 watts at speed and less than a watt at mortal speeds.

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Do people really buy into all of this marketing crap?

:slight_smile:

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So, does anyone actually know what Alaphillipe’s preferred setup is in terms of width and stem length, and whether Spesh actually make aerobars in this combination?

I don’t know his numbers, but I’m pretty sure Specialized would make him custom bars to his preferred specs if he wanted.

They absolutely do these days. Here is a GCN bike check of one of Allaphilipe’s bikes, where they claim it is 7.26kg. It’s rare they show pro bikes at 6.8kg once they’re actually ready to ride with pedals, cages and mounts. Discs, aero and integrated cables have made it reasonably tricky to get there.

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They will now. :rofl:

Noting of course that the world champs are raced as national teams, not trade teams, and they may not have had the full selection of components to hand.

Yes in aero there are a lot of claims from manufacturers where the specific test that shows their product as best is highlighted in the marketing material. Socks that claim to be the fastest - but data shows only at 60+kph.

However, no smoke without fire - undoubtedly attention to aero gains is one of the reasons we’ve seen breaks become more difficult to reel back in the past few seasons.

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Collins cup? Back to comfort - she also said she couldn’t get comfortable, and put out the required power on a TT bike