Originally Posted by
terrymorse
Hmm.
Speaking pure physics, acceleration varies with the reciprocal of mass (A = F/M), so the difference in acceleration ought to be similar to the difference in power-to-mass ratio.
Unless I am missing something obvious.
It’s the very low values of “A” involved with a bicycle that make it insignificant. I made a very simple spreadsheet to calculate the power required to accelerate a mass and it was trivial for a 1 kg mass at 0.1g acceleration, which requires somewhere in the order of 500W to accelerate the total mass at that rate (excluding power required to overcome air and rolling resistance). I might dig it out later if you are interested.
SwissSide developed a simulation tool for comparing aero, weight and rotational inertia for all kinds of specific course profiles. Even they were surprised how little weight and wheel rotational inertia affects performance on a crit course, where accelerations are most brutal.