Originally Posted by
TMonk
The math is correct, I'm just not sure what the relevance of 3 watts is?
Let's pick 200 watts, a middle of the road spirited cruising wattage for most amateur cyclists (of varying body weight). Pactimo claims that you can save 50 watts compared to a tent-like jersey I guess, which is freaking huge. But seriously, what kind of jersey are they comparing that to? Like a Hawaiian shirt???
My 3-watts figure was an estimate of the difference between an ideally low-friction jersey and the tent-like club jerseys. Might be higher, of course.
But even if the difference in drag between a flappy club and an ideal jersey amounts to 10 watts (which sounds high to me), that would still be 0.26 x 10 = only a 2.6-watt reduction in drag for the Pactimo jersey versus a club-fit jersey. Not nothing, but not much for most of us.
That was all for clarification. The Pactimo claim, as noted in subsequent posts, wasn't based on aerodynamics.