Some interesting aerodynamics info

We have a few more Celebrity Death Match reviews coming up, as well as some other topics, but I didn't want today's short bit to get buried in another post. 

Some of you may have heard of Hambini, a British guy who posts on forums and YouTube. Though we disagree with some of what he posits (he has a regrettable attachment to "all that matters is depth when talking about rim aerodynamics" which - spoiler alert - he may have let go given what we're about to point to), he's dead spot on with most of what he sniffs out. Ceramic bearings? Not a fan. Basically he's into practical stuff that works and tries to separate the usually frighteningly expensive snake oil from what's going to work and be efficient and effective for you.

He did a bunch of aerodynamics testing on a range of wheels. Two notable things stick out to me: the first is that an 88mm deep Yoeleo wheel hits with the deep wheels from the big brands. At slower speeds, it's the fastest wheel. The other thing is that there is a grand total of 17w difference at 30km/h, and 53w at 50km/h, from worst to first. At 30km/h (~18mph), the Yoeleo wheel is the fastest, and a 28mm Ksyrium (they have a talent...) is the worst. At 50km/h (~30mph), the Zipp 808 is fastest and - shockingly - the Ksyrium is the worst. The correlation between depth and speed is shown not to exist (which we've discussed a bunch of times before at this link and in a ton of other places), and some of the brands whose claims are going to drive me across the brink of sanity (rhyme with "Punt" and "Slow") are shown not to be all that and a bag of chips. Again, shocker.

Anyway, an impartial set of data for you to look at and process. No one's going to say that 53w isn't significant, but not too many people should be looking at 30mph as their most relevant speed, no one is choosing the Ksyrium as an aerodynamic option, and I don't know too many people who think that 80+mm deep wheels constitute anything like an "every day" option.