{"id":457881,"date":"2026-03-04T23:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/457881\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T23:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:14:15","slug":"everyone-goes-there-how-a-uk-wind-tunnel-became-a-world-leader-for-cycling-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/457881\/","title":{"rendered":"“Everyone goes there”: how a UK wind tunnel became a world leader for cycling innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Silverstone is renowned as the home of British motorsport. The Northamptonshire village has been punctuated by the roar of engines since the circuit on its outskirts hosted the British Grand Prix in 1948, and it has been ever-present on the Formula One calendar since 1987.<\/p>\n

But the local area isn\u2019t dominated solely by petrol-focused engineering perfection. In fact, less than half-a-mile from the race track lies the Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub (SSEH), which is revolutionising the world of cycling performance.<\/p>\n

Opened in 2019, the SSEH has become the gold standard of cycling testing facilities. The cutting-edge engineering space is a one-stop shop for performance-centred testing, offering customers access to industry-leading biomechanical analysis, componentry testing rigs for things such as rolling resistance and chain efficiency, and a pedalling efficiency tool for optimising bike setup. <\/p>\n

Its biggest draw, though, is its sports performance wind tunnel.<\/p>\n

It has proved incredibly popular, too. Read any new aero bike<\/a>\u2019s marketing materials in recent years and there\u2019s a good chance it\u2019ll reference a session at the facility.<\/p>\n

Formula One foundations
\n\"LiamSSEH is backed by decades of aerodynamic expertise. Joseph Branston \/ Our Media<\/p>\n

SSEH\u2019s success hasn\u2019t happened overnight. The research hub is backed by decades of aerodynamic expertise and 20 years of cycling-specific innovation.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy background is CFD aerodynamics,\u201d says Rob Lewis, managing director of TotalSim, the group that owns SSEH. \u201cI was running the CFD team in what was BAR Honda [now Mercedes AMG Petronas] in 2004.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis was approached by British Cycling and UK Sport for help with aerodynamics, and he aided them for the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, as well as in the lead-up to the 2016 Games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter 2012, I sat with Chris Boardman saying, \u2018this is a bit silly. You get a handful of athletes to fly all the way to Southampton to do a few wind tunnel tests a year. What you want is a bicycle wind tunnel embedded in the training cycle at Manchester so the athletes can go [to the] velodrome, gym, physio, wind tunnel, and they become the aerodynamicists and the innovators,\u2019\u201d Lewis says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The facility at the University of Southampton was a repurposed aerospace tunnel that \u201cgot hacked into a motorsport tunnel with a rolling road\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTo do bicycles in there, the Southampton guys would lower the rolling road out the way and then put in a balance that the cyclist could sit on. It was all a temporary installation and not perfect,\u201d adds Lewis.<\/p>\n

Instead, he was proposing a scaled-down wind tunnel designed specifically for cycling, catering to the sport\u2019s relatively low speeds, exposure to crosswinds of varying angles, and the fact that cyclists don\u2019t ride in a fixed position.<\/p>\n

While British Cycling decided not to take Lewis up on his proposal, Boardman Bikes and Halfords did, with a retail and amateur-focused wind tunnel opening at the bike brand\u2019s Evesham HQ in 2018. In a circuitous way, when the Boardman Performance Centre was shuttered by Halfords in 2020, British Cycling ended up buying the wind tunnel and moving it to Manchester. But Lewis already had another facility up and running by this point.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought, \u2018what we really need is one for R&D with all sorts of tricks and toys and lasers’, so we set out building one for ourselves,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

Although initially planned to be housed in a farmer\u2019s shed to keep costs down, and reserved for the consultancy and design arms of TotalSim such as Catesby Projects and Vorteq, a local growth fund grant in Silverstone meant they could upgrade their plans into an innovation centre open to all.<\/p>\n

When it first opened its doors, it was used mostly for TotalSim-led research \u2013 \u201cOlympic projects were using Silverstone out of the box\u201d \u2013 but over time its reputation spread. Now, the facility is used by pro and nationals teams, product manufacturers and amateurs.<\/p>\n

Aero validation
\n\"PackArgon 18 has used the facility since 2024. Scott Windsor \/ Our Media<\/p>\n

SSEH\u2019s arrival has coincided with a revolution in the dominance of aerodynamics in road cycling, as brands utilise carbon fibre<\/a>\u2019s true wind-cheating potential to make bikes faster and faster. The ever-intensifying focus on airflow, drag and turbulence has expanded across all areas of the sport \u2013 from skinsuits and shoe covers \u2013 creating an arms race to find any marginal aerodynamic advantage that will provide an edge over competitors.<\/p>\n

This escalation wouldn\u2019t have been possible without wind tunnels. A necessary step of the R&D process, a wind-tunnel session is used to validate CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations \u2013 software that can be used to mimic a virtual wind tunnel \u2013 while also highlighting areas for improvement that current CFD programs are unable to calculate.<\/p>\n

To this end, Montreal-based Argon 18<\/a> has used the facilities at SSEH since 2024. \u201cCFD is a great tool in general and provides a very good base but there\u2019s a lot of limitations,\u201d explains Adric Heney, performance engineer at Argon 18. \u201cOftentimes, they are just turbulent areas that are hard to compute.\u201d<\/p>\n

The moving legs of a rider is one area that software is unable to crack, while Heney adds that there are still inaccuracies around wheels spinning or how that air interacts with the forks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to get as close as possible to representing reality, and so that’s why we have to validate everything in the wind tunnel. But that’s also part of the feedback loop \u2013 we do the same tests in the wind tunnel as we do in CFD, and that allows us to see if our CFD simulation is accurate. If not, we have to figure out why, and try to improve our methods,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Getting specific
\n\"RiderReap’s lead designer says SSEH proved to be accurate. Reap<\/p>\n

The wind tunnel at SSEH stands out from others because it\u2019s bike-specific. Unlike other facilities that are built for aerospace, vehicles or architecture, SSEH is able to run the lower speeds that are encountered in cycling, and should in theory mean its results are a lot more accurate and repeatable.<\/p>\n

SSEH isn\u2019t the only bike-specific wind tunnel in the world, though. Specialized unveiled the \u2018Win Tunnel\u2019 at its California HQ in 2013, and there’s the Aero Performance Lab in Beringen, Belgium, and the Low Speed Wind Tunnel in San Diego, USA, to name but a few. However, SSEH has become a preferred site in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vincent Lemay, Argon 18\u2019s vice president of R&D, says: \u201cWe tested and tried a lot of different wind tunnels because we don’t want to be biased also by a certain facility and results, but since we found [SSEH] is very accurate and repeatable, it’s not a bias anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes if there’s a discrepancy between our CFD and the wind tunnel results, we need to have a correlation factor that we need to take into account for all of our analysis of the data afterwards. At Silverstone, normally, it’s quite accurate,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

UK-based Reap Bikes<\/a> also found that SSEH provided accurate results. \u201cWe tested years ago at the University of Southampton wind tunnel before Boardman\/SSEH were around, and had some valid results but from my recollection the specificity just wasn’t there,\u201d says Ben Meir, the brand’s lead designer.<\/p>\n

Wider offering
\n\"WilierWilier used SSEH extensively during the development of the Filante SLR ID2. Scott Windsor \/ Our Media<\/p>\n

Accuracy aside, there are other factors that SSEH has in its favour. Silverstone is a relatively short drive from London\u2019s numerous airports, which makes SSEH easy to access from around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s nothing in Montreal currently, so we would still have to either take a flight or drive quite far to do the testing \u2013 it’s the same cumbersome issues of packing the bike in the box and taking a plane or driving 15 hours to go to a testing somewhere,\u201d says Lemay.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also relatively cheap compared to other wind tunnels: prices starting at \u00a3686 for a two-hour session. Wilier, which has previously used the Politecnico di Milano Wind Tunnel, used SSEH extensively during the development of its Supersonica time trial bike and the updated Filante SLR ID2<\/a>, with chief designer Marco Genovese visiting the facility six times in 2025.<\/p>\n

\"WilierThe Wilier Filante being tested in the SSEH wind tunnel. Wilier<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cost for one single day [in Milan] is higher compared to Silverstone,\u201d he says. \u201cI prefer to go to Silverstone because it’s cheaper than Milan and I can stay there longer at the same cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s the wider offering of SSEH and its parent company TotalSim that sets it apart. Wilier\u2019s new Filante was designed in collaboration with TotalSim\u2019s Catesby Projects, which undertook CFD analysis and provided guidance and advice throughout the R&D phase.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Filante was born thanks to the collaboration with the Catesby Project. It was very important to find someone who can optimise the machines for the calculation, and we got good results immediately,\u201d says Genovese.<\/p>\n

Another TotalSim subsidiary is Bramble, a cloud-based CFD simulator that helps analyse runs in the wind tunnel. \u201cWe can go back through all of our previous testing in one place on a single, easily-managed UI without having to use complex Excel formulas to visualise data,\u201d says Meir.<\/p>\n

The complete package
\n\"LiamArgon 18’s Adric Heney: \u201cIt’s just great to see that they’re still investing and trying to work towards developing a better product.\u201d Joseph Branston \/ Our Media<\/p>\n

The relentless expansion of aerodynamics\u2019 influence on road cycling means the need for bike-specific wind tunnels will only grow.<\/p>\n

As the site helping to drive these state-of-the-art innovations, SSEH is already well-placed and trusted to meet this demand. It\u2019s growing all the time, too, with SSEH continually reinvesting in new features such as a recently launched infrared boundary layer camera, which visualises airflow via a heatmap.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s just great to see they’re still investing and trying to work towards developing a better product. It’s just little things that go a long way to help us have the confidence that we’re trusting in their process and that gives them that reputation. And that’s why everyone goes there,\u201d says Heney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Silverstone is renowned as the home of British motorsport. The Northamptonshire village has been punctuated by the roar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-457881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}