How the pack works on Zwift
The best seat in a Zwift bunch is not glued to the wheel: it's 4–6 m back, in line. There the draft is nearly as big, and you get blocked a fifth as often. Distances here run center to center; take off 1.5 m, a bike's length, for the Director Sportif's Wheel gap meter, where that seat reads 2.5–4.5 m.
Each map puts you behind the rider just ahead of you, who rides up the page. A square is 2 m along the road and half a meter across; darker means more. The left and right sides are the same data, mirrored. Built from every rider in every second of real races and group rides (race recordings), counted for the pack as a whole: no rider can be picked out.
Draft
How much of your air drag Zwift takes away.
Getting blocked
How often a rider here suddenly loses 80 W or more in one second: pushing into the wheel.
Where riding is cheapest
What the spot really saves: the draft, minus what sitting there costs you in the pack.
The burrito
Here the rider ahead has just fired a burrito: how often a rider here gets no draft at all.
too few riders there to say
More detail when you sign in
Signed-in riders will see these maps at four times the detail with the numbers in every square, split by speed (climbing, the flat, descents), and their own rides drawn on top. Signing in is coming soon.
How these were made
From the Director Sportif's recordings of real Zwift races and group rides: every rider in a group of three or more, every second, at 20 km/h or more, placed by where they rode relative to the rider ahead. Draft is Zwift's own. Blocking and cost come from each rider's power against what the speed, the road and the draft needed. No names, no individual tracks: only counts for the pack. Power-ups other than the burrito are left out.