Tour de France 2023 - Stage 4: Dax - Nogaro | 181.8 kilometres
The flat stage ends on the Paul Armagnac circuit. As yesterday, the most likely scenario by far is a bunch sprint. The peloton will ride the last 3.1 kilometres on the race course. There will be tough battles for position to get through the many bends in a good starting position before heading onto the dead straight, 750 metre long and nine metre wide finishing straight, which has a minimal gradient (of 3 metres). In contrast to yesterday, we are simulating a shorter sprint in which the rider only steps out of the slipstream 100 metres before the finish line in an extremely explosive manner.
Number of the day: four hundredths of a second
This is the calculated lead of the fastest wheels in the field over the slowest in the 100 metre sprint from a high starting speed. At the final speed of 65.5 km/h, this corresponds to a lead of the diameter of the front wheel - after all.
At the top, however, things are very, very close. Four wheels are equal to a hundredth of a second in our calculation model. But in the photo finish evaluation, tyre strength can also decide between victory and defeat. Hundredths of a second are too coarse a grid for this, we would have to calculate with thousandths of a second.
Even in a short sprint, aero efforts are still very valuable. However, the rider must be able to accelerate very explosively - otherwise there is no way of overtaking the car in front before the finish line.
The (almost) entire field at a glance
*) The calculations are based on the bikes tested by TOUR in the laboratory and wind tunnel. The bikes at the Tour de France may differ in some details. Of course, we have not yet been able to analyse last-minute prototypes. Background to the simulation.
Our expert
Robert Kühnen studied mechanical engineering, writes about technical and training topics for TOUR and develops test methods. Robert has been refining the simulation calculations for years and they are also used by professional teams.
