Parcours Strade wheelset £999

Michelle-Arthurs Brennan gets up to speed with a new aero wheelset

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An aerodynamic wheel is only as fast as its rider’s ability to control it allows: a wind cheatingly deep rim won’t save you time if you end up riding further due to wavering on the straights or squaring off the corners.

With this in mind, when British brand Parcours created its new Strade midsection wheel, it prioritised stability in crosswinds as well as a rim optimised for 28mm tubeless tyres.

Stability

Working with the Sports Engineering department at Nottingham Trent University, the team sent testers out with wind-measuring instruments fitted to their wheels. Over the course of several months, as well as many strange looks directed at the spaceship-like contraptions, they collected data, which showed how the wind was typically hitting each wheel. The results confirmed their suspicions: the front wheel was consistently experiencing a higher yaw angle, with the rear seeing a lower yaw angle, on average, due to the impact of the bike and rider.

This led the designers to take a mismatched approach, resulting in a blunt 49mm-deep U-shaped rim with a 32mm external width at the front, and a sharper 54mm-deep V-shaped rim with a width of 30.5mm at the back.

It worked — when Parcours tested the Strade against its 40mm Grimpeur wheel, the new design experienced around a third less side-force impact.

Aero