Yesterday I was following B Genie on London Classique for multiple laps.
And i came across one point where our small group always lost the draft.
It it the first 180 turn you encounter on the lap, gong 1% uphill.
Bot riding 3.6./3.7
Untill the corner you can hang on perfectly around 3.3 ish, but right after the corner the pacer shoots ahead.
I’ve tried different wkg, but even while doing 4.5 as 2nd rider I was left to chase afterwards.
Edit: this behaviour did not happen in the other 180 degree, close to the finish.
It’s a massive auto-brake area; it’s basically the only one I’ve ever seen in Zwift, but it seems to have either gotten worse in the last patch or two.
I noticed it the most during the TTT the other week, where we got shunted down from like 28mph to maybe 12mph.
It’s a very strange turn.
This braking force has been a bit on-off over the last few years, not sure why it’s different some days versus others or what causes the inconsistency at times, but it’s definitely a thing.
Noticed this last night with Jacques, every lap, the U turn on the mall, the RP would make a rather significant gap every single lap and I would have to bring up the power dramatically to catch back on.
Some pictures to explain; this was on London Classique.
First image to show the consistency, this was over almost 2 hours, the large peaks are from the hill up to the roundabout each lap, but the smaller ones are the U turn.
Was trying to keep my head at the base of hip the whole way down Mall, and despite being extremely steady, see gap that formed each lap.
I wonder if this is loss of draft in corners, with an extreme corner increasing the loss of draft. When I am sweeping a group ride I know that I must slow down in corners to not gap the people behind even if their power is constant.
Don’t think so, not in this case at least. Only because of how much speed dropoff there is on this turn in particular, also can experience this sometimes in Richmond on the U turn.
The braking is really obvious on things like TTT’s where we’ll lose like 5+ mph going through this turn.
Uploaded the fit to intervals so you can see the speed, put a split in at the U turns, and you can see said drop in speed; it’s not loss of draft, because the robos bolt off, but I could otherwise sit next to Jacques at times without too much issue, and not fall back that fast
Top blue is gradient, middle is speed, gray lower is elevation
That little divot is the U turn.
The middle bar with the blue fill though you can see a very obvious drop in speed for a moment, and then me pushing out of turn to catch back on.
Worth noting, the grade here is obviously hardly anything at all, sub +/-1%, rounded up on the HUD to an integer of course.
I noticed the same behavior during an APR-2025 ride with Genie. The top chart is altitude, which confirms the location. The bottom chart is power/zone which shows the effort required to keep up with Genie after the U-turn.
I can confirm this. All pace partners which comes to this U-turn in London are doing this surge / acceleration and you have to chase them. Had the same with genie some months back.
What kind of “friend” is that, letting them sit on Constance at 400+ watts?!
That’s not friendly, that’s evil!
Honestly though, seeing how hard Constance blasts away in that video makes Yumi look like chump change, that’s insane.
Still happening - same issue for me with an A-bot in London at that U-turn yesterday. I was looking for a hard workout but not that hard! Tried but dropped.
When exiting from the Buckingham Hairpin on the London map, RoboPacers take a sudden acceleration and drop the group. This is a consistent behavior and happens every lap, with different RoboPacers and different routes and has for a long time.
Before entering the hairpin, the group is keeping pace:
There is a slight gradient change from +1% to -1%, but that doesn’t feel like it should have this big of an impact. I don’t recall encountering a similar situation anywhere in the game world.
that’s the hairpin that automatically puts the brakes on right? Maybe the robopacers are immune to that behavior and aren’t being forcibly slowed down like everyone else?
I made a new post today, but it was merged into this one that I didn’t know about. It’s good to learn why it’s happening, but sure would be nice if something could be done about it.
