GROUPTEST
It ’s not all about the bike – we ride and rate the latest lines of go-faster finery
Your body accounts for around 80% of the drag caused by you and your bicycle. And aerodynamic drag itself accounts for around 80% of the total resistive forces that slow you down when you’re out riding. From that, it doesn’t take a physicist to tell you that what you cover your body with is wor th considering – particularly because, as an object picks up speed, air resistance increases. This means in scenarios where you’re moving quickly, air resistance has an outsized effect. Nat ural ly, we look for ways to overcome this and one trick we have is by wrapping ourselves in what is essentially a tight onesie.
Premium skinsuits feature special fabrics designed to reduce drag and manipulate air flow. Tex t ured fabrics are strategically placed and seams are also carefully considered. Premium suits are often developed in the wind tunnel and they claim to offer a significant aerodynamic advantage over more basic, more affordable Lyc ra suits.
A lthough £200, £300 or more might seem a big investment, when we asked head of product development and R&D for R apha, Simon Huntsman, he explained: “The price of the suit is often a reflection of the R&D i nvestment that has gone into ensuring efficient aerodynamic per formance. Entr y-level suits are generally off-the-peg and top-end suits are invariably custom-fitted.
“ Top-end suits are also the result of serious R&D that i nvolves wind tunnel testing to ensure the gains are proven . This is an expensive business.”
For this test we haven’t done our own aerodynamic testing – and of course different skinsuits work differently for different body shapes as wel l as at different speeds, so there wouldn’t be a lot of value in it. You ’d need to do your own testing for that. So we tested these skinsuits by racing in them, riding hard in them for long rides (chai n-gangs, road races and just long hard r ides) as wel l as putting them th rough their paces on the turbo – as a means of check ing their capacity for dissipating heat. On top of that, each suit was washed multiple times as a means of analysing the potential longevit y of the suit, keeping an eye out for damaged seams and other general signs of wear and tear.
Castelli Sanremo 4 .1 £260
It was Castelli that redesigned the time trial skinsuit for the road with its original Speed Suit in 2011 – famously worn to victory in Paris-Roubaix by Johan Vansummeren that year. The Italian brand claims the 4.1 continues this legacy, with over a decade’s worth of racing and research behind it.
This suit is optimised for speeds between 30-55kph
