If you’re looking to ride your bike faster, then aerodynamic drag is typically the biggest thing holding you back. Upgrading to a dedicated aero road bike can come with a significant price tag, though. Fortunately, there are plenty of other bits of kit that don’t cost the earth but can dramatically decrease your overall aerodynamic drag.
To find out what the best value aero upgrades are, we enlisted the help of Stephen Roche of The Bike Tailor (an expert in bike fitting, aero testing and custom builds based in London and Brighton), and the Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub’s wind tunnel. With Roche’s help, our aero model Liam Cahill put a range of products (helmets, handlebars, wheels, tri-bars, speed suits and socks) and riding positions to the test to find out which offer the biggest aerodynamic gains for the least money spent.
When you ride a bike, a number of forces are acting against you, such as rolling resistance, drag and gravity. Though your power-to-weight ratio is a large determinant of performance on long, steep climbs, drag is the main problem almost everywhere else. You can pedal harder and increase your power output, but at some point that becomes unsustainable, even for the strongest riders. That’s where your aerodynamic profile comes in as, while the focus of development tends to be on refining bikes and equipment, the rider accounts for 70-80% of the total aerodynamic drag in the rider plus-bike system.
Time, then, to reveal seven of the best-value aerodynamic upgrades that show huge watts savings aren’t just for the elite…
CP’s aero expert
Simon von Bromley Senior tech writer
● Simon is a senior technical writer for and has been riding bikes all his life, and racing road and time trial bikes for over a decade. He has a keen
