What Can the McLaren Racing Team Teach the Rest of Us? Another early client was Specialized. The Northern California bicycle maker had long claimed that “smoother is faster,” meaning that the ability of its high-performance road and mountain bikes to absorb bumps not only made them more comfortable to ride but also quicker than the competition. Smoother, however, isn’t always faster: A too-flexible bike steals power from the rider’s pedaling. So how smooth was too smooth? The testing methods that even industry-leading bikemakers like Specialized used—putting people on prototypes to ride them and report back—were highly subjective and of limited use. “We’d been taking the measurements that were used to build this model for years, but we could not put it together,” says Mark Cote, Specialized’s manager for aerodynamics research and development. “There’s a kind of analysis paralysis in the world today, with every single piece of your world being measured in some way.” McLaren, he says, laughing, “has way too many sensors on their cars, and they know how and when to interpret that data.”
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 02:30:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015