why do the fastest bicycles have really thin tyres but the fastest cars have very wide tyres

Question

why do the fastest bicycles have really thin tyres but the fastest cars have very wide tyres

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Funny that you ask this because the bike industry is going through some major rethinking about tire width and speed. It used to be just accepted that narrower tires were faster and people accepted this because the vibrations made them feel faster. Now people are diving into it with data and the data are showing that the standard 700×23 skinny tires are not faster. The transmission of vibration and bouncing rather than rolling smoothly is actually working against speed. We’re starting to seeing tire widths go up in the pro circuit and they’d probably go up faster if cycling didn’t have such a devotion to tradition and institutional inertia.

https://www.renehersecycles.com/12-myths-in-cycling-1-wider-tires-are-slower/