At the Grand Départ of the 2024 Tour de France, as I wandered about the Piazzale Michelangelo, which hosted the Teams Presentation ahead of stage 1 in Florence, I spotted an unusual tyre.
It was Continental-branded, but with what can only be described as ‘divets’ chipped out of it at regular intervals along each shoulder, instead of the usual Continental sipe design.
The tests
Rolling resistance test
For the rolling resistance portion of our test, we used Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub’s Pedalling Efficiency Rig.
This is a system that mounts a bike via the fork onto a large drum, which is printed with three road surfaces. For the purpose of this test, we used the ‘smooth road’ option, which is formed from a 3D scan of the road used in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games Time Trial.
It measures ‘power in’ at the pedals, and ‘power out’ at the drum. There’s no aerodynamic component to measure, since the bike is fixed in position, and it is therefore able to measure total system loss – which generally comes from drivetrain friction, frame flex, and tyre rolling resistance -…
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