Technical Support Manager Glen Leven answers the question on everyone’s lips
At the Paris-Nice team time trial we sat down with Glen for a quick chat about our riders’ TT helmet choices.
At Paris-Nice we saw riders wearing different helmets for the TTT – why is that?
With Trek we have the flexibility that they don’t produce their own time trial helmet, so we had the freedom to choose the helmet that works best for each rider, according to our aero testing.
Tell us about the aero testing process
We do both track testing at the velodrome as well as wind tunnel testing. In the track testing we collect Cda data as the helmet is one of the first parts that touches the wind. Every rider is different with a different body shape, so there is not one helmet that is consistently fastest. This is why finding the fastest helmet for each rider is so important and why you see Lidl-Trek riders with different time trial helmets.
We have Aerosensor as a partner of the team, which gives you live data of the Cda. Riders do 10 laps on the track and we take the average reading of those laps to understand the Cda of each test helmet. After we have defined the best helmet, we make further adjustments to adapt it to the ideal position in the wind tunnel.
How much saving are we talking about?
It’s significant. We see values changing up to 10 watts, which is a huge amount of time over a long time trial.
Why don’t we do this with road helmets too?
The Trek Ballista helmet is a super-fast helmet and the riders love it so it makes no sense to use anything else. The body moves a lot more on the road compared to a time trial where the arms are locked on the extensions, so the helmet is not making the same difference. We tested our Ballista helmet against the competitors and it’s one of the fastest on the market.
