Take6 days ago
Drag test finds a new fast tyre, and a popular one that isn't
Escape Collective tested 10 popular road tyres for drag at three pressures using real-world measurement rather than lab estimates. The results show a tyre beating Continental's usual lead in the racing category, while one of the market's most popular tyres measured slower than its reputation suggests. Measured drag, not sales numbers, is what should set the pecking order here.
What this means
The result unsettles Continental's standing as the default pick in the racing category and gives buyers a data-backed reason to question a popular tyre's reputation.
The test ran on the Streamlines Cirrus system — the Altostratos probe, Forma body position sensor and Tempo speed sensor — paired with a SRAM Red power meter. Riders completed GPS-gated out-and-back runs at two power targets, upwind and downwind, generating four airspeeds to map how drag changes with speed. As the testers put it: «Even if we were to make a significant error in the initial Crr estimation, that error would subsequently apply to all tyres equally.» That's why a challenger can displace Continental at the top and a popular tyre can fall short — the ranking holds even if the starting assumptions are imperfect.
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