Up to 130 watts from the motos: Why it pays to attack like Pogačar

Cor Vos, Aerocloud

A little over three weeks ago at Milan-San Remo, Tadej Pogačar launched his now-familiar assault on the Poggio and, as expected, the race exploded behind him. With most of the race already distanced, Mathieu van der Poel was quickly disposed of; only Tom Pidcock could hold the wheel.

We watched in awe as the TV cameras brought us this thrilling show of dominance only Pogačar can produce. Except it wasn’t just him.

On the other side of that camera is a convoy of motorbikes. Not one, but five, mostly in two-by-two formation, bunched up directly in front of the world champion as he unleashed the fury of having so narrowly missed out on La Classicisima so many times before and the adrenaline of a crash just 20 or so minutes earlier.

Helicopter shots and roadside footage emerging on social media after the race showed just how many bikes were right there, just in front of him. How much were those motos helping?

A great image of Pogačar in full flight on the Poggio... but at what cost to the racing?

To be clear, this is not to diminish Pogačar’s brilliance. The Slovenian is the most dominant rider of his generation and perhaps the best the sport has ever seen. He can win in almost any scenario imaginable and likely would have decimated San Remo regardless. But that is precisely what makes the issue worth examining. The rider strong enough to force himself clear is also the rider most likely to find himself alone at the front of the race, and therefore most likely to inherit the aerodynamic shelter of the vehicles ahead.

That creates a compounding advantage. Rivals are left chasing not only a stronger rider, but often one benefitting from moto draft. As former WorldTour rider Alex Dowsett told Escape Collective , the sport’s biggest stars also tend to attract the most cameras and attention, meaning the riders most likely to attack are often the riders most likely to have more motorbikes in front of them when they do.

Motorbikes and their draft influencing bike races is hardly a new phenomenon. Riders, fans, and pundits have complained about it for decades. But in an era of increasingly dominant solo attacks, increasing speeds, and heightened scrutiny over race safety, the issue feels more relevant than ever.

The challenge, however, is that the same motorbikes potentially influencing the race are also fundamental to how the sport is delivered to the audience. Without them, there is no live broadcast, no head-on shots of defining attacks, no television product, and arguably no commercially viable professional cycling as we know it.

So I set out with a question: How much advantage do motorbikes really provide and what can be done about it? As I researched this article a new question formed … should we do anything about it, or do we even want to do anything about it?

To find out, we spoke to aerodynamicists, former professionals, race photographers, commentators, and the television production staff responsible for bringing the sport to screen.

The benefits of a draft can be massive

We asked Luca Oggiano of CFD specialists Aerocloud to model the Poggio scenario. Using a 3D rider model as a stand-in for Pogačar, Oggiano built a six-motorbike convoy based on the race footage (five in front of the rider, one behind) and ran a CFD simulation to compare that rider’s drag in clean air versus in the wake of the vehicles ahead. We were not expecting the magnitude of the result.

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