Point 3 is not true. Nowadays the downtube of most areo bikes has moved away from slim teardrop design. Instead, it is oversized and kamn tail designed to optimized for bottles (even round ones). They are far better than slim round tube classis bikes.jfranci3 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 23, 2022 1:58 amYou're smoking crack.
1) an Aethos and a Classic round tube bike measure differently. A good classic bike will perform better than a modern AL or CF round tube bike because the tubes are half the size. Specialized has a YouTube vid of this.
2) worst case round tube bike with all the wrong parts on a modern bike was about 239w on their test. All the right parts on the wrong frame put those bikes around 224w in Tours test. All the best parts was about 202w. Aero handle bars are about 5-8w and the wheels are around 10w. Clean cable routing (vs OEM excessive lengths) is probably 2-3w. At best you're looking at 20w, but most aero road bikes are around 210w. 10w is more realistic.
3) None of those bikes ever has a water bottle on them. Aside from the bike-specific aero bottles, which are kind of useless realistically, the water bottle will affect the aero bike a lot more than the round tube bike.
4) it depends on the frame size. Aero frames dont matter as much for smaller people.
Back in 2014(?), Giant Propel was the first areo bike designed with round bottles. Look how they chose the shape for bottles. There is a video (I forget the name) about it comparing Propel, Venge, Madone, etc w/ and w/o round bottles. Propel is not the fastest w/o bottles, but the fastest w/ bottles, adding no more than 5 Watts IIRC.
I also disagree with your last point. I'm a small and slim guy (170 cm, 55 kg, size 52). Areo frame matters. Aero drag is already small on small body, and the percentage of the frame drag is arguably larger, at least not smaller.
