Cycling teams spend tens of millions each year, with Ineos going over € 50m some time ago. Are they conservative? They benchmark their material in wind tunnels. Sometimes they bend the rules with high-tech material[^1]. There's no way a team competing in Tour de France would choose fashion over performance.
The whole thing is a fashion show with very narrow limits of what the UCI wants people to do. The rules that ban e.g. the famous Lotus bike were explicitly stated as being meant to discourage wind tunnel testing. Fairings and recumbents have been banned for nearly 100 years because they're too much faster than UCI-style bikes.
If you want fairings and recumbents, look up IHPVA. They have been arranging competitions where these are allowed for a long time, with very little popularity. I think the main reason is that time trials where the team with most money wins are boring, and UCI has more or less figured out what limitations make the race interesting.
Now compare the situation with mountain biking. UCI didn't adopt it at first either (IIRC the claimed reason was they already have cyclocross that is almost the same thing), but after it was popular enough they didn't really have a choice.
It's not about fashion, it's about maintaining an enjoyable and popular sport. 4D chess is probably more "interesting" than regular chess, but people play regular chess because it's a good game that people know and understand. They could start allowing funny looking bikes, maybe off-road sections and, heck, why not an army style assault course? But at that point it's just not the Tour de France any more.
> 4D chess is probably more "interesting" than regular chess, but people play regular chess because it's a good game that people know and understand. They could start allowing funny looking bikes, maybe off-road sections and, heck, why not an army style assault course?
That's an absurd comparison - it's not like we're talking about changing the course or the rules, and it's not like the UCI rules have people consistently using historical-style bikes (they rapidly adopted electric shifting, or novel frame materials, for example). In the world of fencing we have both sport fencing (try to win by whatever means within the rules) and historical fencing (trying to match historical materials, styles etc.) and both those are distinct and interesting disciplines. But adding ad-hoc rules to exclude some innovations but not others, as the UCI does, is the worst of both worlds.
You mentioned recumbent bikes. These would massively change the game as drafting wouldn't work any more. Riding in a peloton wasn't always a thing, of course, but it has been in recent years and it works well. The UCI do change the rules, but they are very conservative and that's a good thing, I think.
Drafting still helps for recumbents - less than for an upright since your drag is lower, but it's not like your drag is zero.
The UCI are conservative in some areas, but they're not conservative when it comes to something the big-name manufacturers want to sell (like electric shifting). It feels very artificial to me.
And quite a bit of the money they spend comes from companies trying to sell gear to hobbyists. It's a rather wild mix between ride what makes you fast and ride to pretend that it makes you fast.
Pinarello bikes, Shimano groupsets, Fizik saddles, Kask helmets, Castelli kit, Oakley glasses, and all the other things you see surrounding the fat guy at the coffee shop on a Sunday morning ;)
I guarantee the masters of marginal gains, Sky (now Ineos Grenadiers), will have spent some resources on looking at which tyres are actually faster for them, regardless of fashion or sponsors.
I think it’s safe to say that whatever they ride on are the fastest options - and every other team would follow - or that within a certain set of parameters, it doesn’t matter.
I just tried to search to see if Ineos run different tyres on different race and stages, and found nothing conclusive.
According to eurosport commentary they do change wheels and tires based on the race. That said they use rim brakes so probably never go over 28m tires.
