Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulB2
Maybe the whole point of the spat is not so much to keep air off the tire, but to create a partial vacuum to make it easier to squoosh the air out, and diverting air around to the back of the tire to make it easier for air to fill the vacuum created by that part of the tire leaving the ground.
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I think it's is not that the tire is "squooshing" air out, but that the wheel is a steeply angled flat plane near the ground, which makes it a very good vortex generator, and vortices are energy that you can't get back no matter what. The spats help push air away from the tire.
Not an aerodynamics expert, just my guess.