Better Snow Tractionīecause fat tires maintain contact with a wider surface area, they generally provide better traction. This is particularly noticeable with carbon-frame bikes, compared to the heavier aluminum frames of the past. This makes them lighter and consequently faster. Narrower tires have less bulk than their wider counterparts. Ideally, you’ll get the best aerodynamic performance when the tire’s diameter is 2-4mm less than the brake track width. In turn, this gives you improved aerodynamics, so you exert less effort pedaling. AerodynamicsĪ narrow tire’s smaller frontal area reduces rolling resistance, which means lower drag. This helps it keep more of its round shape, so it rolls better and faster. By contrast, a fat tire’s flattened contact area is shorter. A fat tire has a wide but short contact area, while a skinny tire has a thin yet longer contact area.īecause a narrow tire’s flattened contact area is longer, it deforms more and loses more of its round shape while rotating. At equal air pressure, a fat tire and a skinny tire will have the same contact surface. When your tire flattens under your weight, part of it touches the road as a flat contact surface. In the last few years, however, we’ve seen a new argument: At the same pressure, thicker tires are faster because of tire deflection, which is the way tires distribute weight under a load. Until recently, scientists and engineers agreed that thinner tires had better rolling resistance. Here are some of the tire specifications that affect rolling resistance: It’s also the second reason for drag after wind resistance. This happens because of rolling resistance, which is the energy necessary to flex the tire surface where it contacts the ground. Rolling Resistanceĭifferent tires roll with different smoothness levels. While this may not matter much to regular folk, it’s a vital consideration for racing pros. Keep in mind that the difference in speed can be mere fractions of a second. Narrow tires slice through wind resistance easily and faster than wider tires. Even though cyclists wear tight clothes and use drop bars to help them cut through it, wind resistance only increases the faster they go. The first culprit behind drag is wind resistance. These two reasons made speed a key point.Ĭonsequently, narrow tires were the solution for the three issues that affect speed: Wind resistance, rolling resistance, and aerodynamics.
#WIDEST TIRES TO FIT COLNAGO C40 PRO#
Road bikes were designed to zoom by on smooth asphalt, and, even though not all road bikes are racing bikes, many are the choice for pro racing. Here are the most important reasons for that. Racers go even skinnier with 21mm tires or narrower. Road bikes generally come with 23mm or 25mm tires as the default width. Many urban streets are littered with glass debris and loose gravel, which affect speed and are just two of the many culprits that puncture narrow tires. The operative term here, of course, is smooth and paved. Road bikes are made for driving on super-smooth, paved urban roads. 11.1 Continue Reading… What Are Road Bikes for?