Dear All (sorry, I can't today answer all the individual mail which my minor contribution to that topic raised, I'm chasing up a bike !!! I apologize for that. I'll do it tommorow)
I'll try some googling around in the near future and find out who the engineers were in the time preceding and during the Boardman tests. I'm quite sure they would have tested everything including tyre widths and pressures. They would also have taken as complete as possible measures on a "standard" bike, because it would be foolish to proceed otherwise: if you are going to improve on anything, you need to have a very clear and undisputable load of data on what you are aiming to improve upon.
I'm sure the work on Armstrong was good and in some ways superceded the Lotus work, but from general experience I'd point out that anyone not involved usually in bikes would consider things in a different light than someone who already has a "bike formatted brain" or culture. And therfore come up with some neat questions. It's often that you get a team of experts debating something, and a little old lady knows nothing about anything turns up and says "but why don't you just do that" and it turns out she's so, so right !
I saw on the list someone doubting that Lotus would have worked tyre aerodynamics into the equation. Those guys built multi-million buck racing cars where the slightest detail made the difference between loosing or winning a unimaginable load of money, and believe me, they'd work tyres into the equation in all ways from aero drag to rolling resistance in every imaginable configuration. Agreed, they'd perfect the rider position first because a rider and his moving legs are the dominating factor in cx, but then they'd hound down every little detail, hower insignificant it might seem. And as cx isn't the only factor involved in going fast, they's have looked at a lot of other things.
I also agree that a lot of the data and improvements would not affect the everyday cyclist, and that doing tests on windwheaters, bags et al. is the sensible way to go about it.
Nick Bordo, 47 Agen France
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