I disagree. I just kind of randomly pulled this from the internet, but look at the air turbulance behind the bars. First, as you both imply, in the big picture, the drag from the bar tops is small potatoes.robertbb wrote: ↑Sat Oct 20, 2018 9:50 pm^^^ Truth.bilwit wrote: ↑Sat Oct 20, 2018 9:04 pm5W measured with or without a rider?
BikeRadar did a wind tunnel test with wrapped aero bars that showed only a 1W difference between wrapped and no wrapped.. but the configuration they showed was without a rider altogether which makes me think that the actuals savings is magnitudes less than this number
However, note that the air turbulance created by the tops of the bar (drag) resolves before it reaches the rider. Thus, the drag is addative to the drag of the rider. So if aero tops save some watt of drag, it should be about the same rider or not.
I suspect if the saving is say 5 watts without rider, than with it should be 4.5 watts or some other close number with a rider.
All armchair logic, but just putting it out there.