Tyre widths & bike choice confusion

[GrasB]

mean in the real world?

At 25mph I'm pushing out around 300w...

That's a qualitative statement. Have the teams done any proper research into this?

Testing data is out there from all kinds of sources. Some is from teams, some is from tyre manufatures other data is from independent tests.

No idea what you are talking about.

The co-effocent of rolling resistance. It's basically a way to calculate how much power is used at a given speed (it actually scales like a gradient so a Crr of 0.1 is like riding up a 10% incline all the time, the lower the Crr the better. Tyres tend to be in the 0.002-0.005 range. If you were to plot the Crr for various pressures with a given tyre load you'd see a graph which was a V but with the side of the V beyond minimal Crr being steaper than the side under minimal Crr.

Do you know what proportion of pro teams use wider tyres?

Small but growing. Every time it's reported more teams seem to be swapping over.
http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/05/news/giro-tech-rise-of-the-25c-tire_218011

Seems like self fulfilling bollox to me.

The revolution started from people who were riding on wider tyres from rougher stages & races on normal roads. What happened was people started realising that actually they were faster on 'rough road' tyres than narrower tyres.

 

[NeoCaesar]

Wider tyres do not mean slower tyres, I used to commute on 35mm Vittoria Randonneur Hyper Folding City Tyres and when I changed to 28mm GP4 Seasons there was no difference in my average speed.

Maybe wider tyres of similar tread might not result in a noticeable difference but wider with more tread is going to be slower than narrow slicks though...