The Heyday of Horribly Slow Helmets - Wind Tunnel
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- Опубликовано: 5 мар 2024
- There was a really bad era for Helmet Aerodynamics and I think Specialized were one of the forerunnners for slowest helmet at the time. We look into how bad it really was....
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So the reason we lost the national TTT by 2 seconds in 2006 had nothing to do with me being unable to hang onto your wheel (as well as throwing up all over you guys), it was because we were wearing a rubbish helmet!
Well the issue with the sock color is no longer an issue now that they banned the sock.
Only for UCI sanctioned events
Now just need to make a variety of skin-coloured socks that you can 100% match with your own skin tone and the UCI won't notice you're using it!
I’d love to see how Lemond’s 1989 Giro TT helmet from the TDF stacks up against a ponytail - not a GCN “test” but a proper wind tunnel test.
I will be interested to see what the UCI does after the recent turmoil over the new Visma helmet and the subsequent banning of the Specialized 'sock' and then the UCI saying that they are undertaking a 'review' of the new helmets. To me, the UCI seem to be overly reactionary to the public comments given that the helmets they are supposedly going to 'review' have already been approved for use and in some circumstances have been used for an entire season already.
I'm going to side with the teams/manufacturers Giro/Rudy/Bahrain/Visma on this one. They argue that the helmets meet all safety criteria and were certified in order to be sold to the general public (the question of who would want to be seen wearing one is a separate discussion). In the case of Rudy Project they even state that the UCI itself, as per their own regulations, approved their specific helmet only 10 days before and I'm guessing the Giro one went through the same approval process. Also, those helmets are "only" helmets, oddly shaped? yes, but they are just head protection. Also the argument that the pertinent UCI regulation is only 1 year old and that it cannot already be changing and nullifying all the R&D and investment that went into those helmets seems to me a highly compelling one.
As for the Specialized "sock", there I'm siding with the UCI in that it serves no safety purpose whatsoever and if they ban knee socks and dimpled TT suits it's only logic to ban the "sock" as well as it appears to fall into the same ban criteria.
@@edthelizzard I would agree if it wasn't for one glaring problem, they aren't sold publicity. Yes they have to make it for sale after a certain time frame but they can get around that by jacking up the price to 1,000 dollars and perpetually out of stock. I would side with them if they made an effort to bridge that gap to consumers.
@@Xhadp Yes but eventually they will also meet that criteria. Hanseeno carbon shoes suffered from the same stock shortage I seem to recall, and from the same price jacking as well. That does not negate the argument itself. Groupsets are usually only available 1 year after they are seen being tested on athlete's bikes.
A no-win situation for the UCI (as usual). 99.9999% outcry to ban the new Giro helmet. 100% outcry that the UCI is reviewing the rules for TT helmets.
@@larrylem3582 On what grounds will they ban it then? I want to see it race, don't really care how it looks.
"Now i know that ladies tights come in all different colours" - thats something you often do not hear on a wind tunnel test video :D
Again, very interesting Alex. Thanks ;-)
Super interesting, amazing that the old Spesh helmet is so slow
We need ayour thoughts on the current uci TT helmet fiasco
Super interesting video. It's nice to know that a helmet can protect you and be aerodynamic.
Wow - huge differences between the MDT fairing and the Vino Specialized - cheers for publishing this series.
Fairing is definitely a better name for those things than helmets.
Can you elaborate more on the visor vs non-visor. We've seen it quite often that the pros discard the visor on climbs of mountain TTs, I assume it is because it's value diminishes, but it'd still be lovely to hear more in depth about why/when it is faster and not. All the best, N
Probably a vision thing with the visor steaming up
Would say the same thing, slower speeds aero becomes less important. Visors generally are less important to aero than people think they are also
The sock’s been banned already hasn’t it?
The “old boy” reminded me of that mad Specialized concept tandem shiv from the same time that they built.
That was interesting, I can't remember the marketing for the helmets with the crash protection added but I bet they didn't say they were slower! Am I right in saying that a particular helmet's aero performance varies from person to person anyway? This makes it a lottery for the average person who can't afford to go to the wind tunnel. Also the cost of other aero goodies is stupidly expensive so I'm all for the introduction of the road bike TT category where it puts things more in favour of the rider themselves and not their wallet! What do you think? Cheers.
I would be curious to see the old helmets tested in a time-appropriate TT bike and TT position (i.e. a 2006 TT bike set up as it would have been then), surely the helmets are designed for an older bike position so may not be appropriate when tested on a modern position?
Where can you buy the different visors for the TT5?
@Alex, it seems you didn't wear glasses with the middle specialized helmet, but you did with the old one. Do you think that wearing glasses act as a vizor and therefore also make the helmet slower?
It would be super interesting to compare the absolute best vs absolute worst setup at the end to see how linear the single gains are adding up.
Curious if the helmets combined with the handlebars / arms /hands of the era combined made an effect...can you isolate the helmet effect from the rest of the body if the back / chest contributes? Obviously, I dont know squat.
Why is that monster helmet with a sock faster than the alien looking old white and red monstrosity? Shape wise, intuitively you'd expect the opposite.
Awesome that you get to test these things.
I think that the older helmet would be more aero, if it was only about the helmet and the head. But a big part of the rider's shape is the shoulders, and the bigger, newer helmet helps deflect wind around the shoulders better and make the overall package more aero. ❤
Hello, may I ask for a piece of advice? If you could recommend only 1 aero helmet for me to use on a TT bike for 24-hour time trials, what would it be?
Hjc Adwatt or the Poc Cerebel, good with and without visors and will perform well with head movement.
I have a question: If you say "there is a difference of 5%" does that mean, that the whole system (helmet + athlete + bike) is 5% slower or faster, depending on which helmet you use, or is it just the helmet alone (which accounts only for a fraction of the drag of the whole system)?
Thank's in advance!
Do you have an idea on the data behind wearing a tail helmet but incorrectly? As in people that look down with it and the tail sticks up? Is it worse than a bowling ball helmet?
Curious, not sure if you will read this. But it in my rude tests of the Poc Mushroom helmet it was always giving me slower times on my runs, whereas I found smaller helmets worked better for me. I recently tested the Adwatt though and it’s showing fastest now. Again, rude tests (mywindsock) to see a pattern on my cda. But my question is, have you see where something smaller like a Kask Bambino or Adwatt work better for people than say big lids like the POC? The trend towards bigger can’t always be a positive for all riders?
Great question, the tempor we’ll feature in a later video, but your calculations could well be spot on. I like to think it was called the tempor for its tempor-amental nature. On me it was quickest so long as it was positioned perfectly with very little room to manoeuvre. Out of position it would be quite awful. Similarly the adwatt was on almost on par with optimal Tempor but much more resilient to moving around. I find also the Tempor works very well on narrow shouldered folk and less so on broad shouldered folk like me.
@@AlexDowsettOfficial Thanks so much for the reply, and keep up the great work & videos. Cheers from Thailand!
5:57 you've just gone and done it now.... CTT TTs this season, full of guys with their partners tights on their heads/neck under their helmet (all types), hoping for a 1W gain.. (...I'll report back on my testing.. :) )
Id love to see the new Giro monstrosity tested LOL
Adding crash protection to helmets making the outer shell no longer skin-tight made them larger and have higher drag. But now folks are finding that the largest size TT helmets are faster than the small sizes on a given rider.
Aerodynamics are not just about reducing frontal area. It's also about smoothing the airflow. A nice large rounded surface has lower drag than a smaller, spiky object because the airflow around the smaller object gets disrupted in a much larger area than the smooth object. Look at ships, they have a large bulbous bulb in front of the ship nowadays and that bulb smooths the entry of the ship in the water. If it was just about reducing the surface area of the ship, it would not work, but since it smooths the water flow, the ship travels faster with less energy used.
Interesting that the UCI just banned the sock helmet (or only the sock?)
It's always socks with the UCI isn't it? 😅
Missed opportunity to call thee Watts Fastest haha
With the “watts occurin” podcast I feel it would be copying 😂
@@AlexDowsettOfficialfair! Haha
Hi Alex huge fan here! Would you like to participate in a beautiful 100-mile charity ride in Maryland this July?
Asking a person based out of the UK, knowing for representing team UK for a ride in the states? Don't think you'll get much luck out of that.
Where's Maryland?
@@hugoyoung4890 It's in the USA