Originally Posted by Joel Klavins
I noticed that some wheels are like that, such as some of the Fulcrum'. Does that mean they're bad for sprinting and climbing? I'm still a newbie to wheel building...
It's interesting you mention Fulcrum, at one time they actually touted their unique lacing pattern as delivering good stiffness, the website doesn't seem to carry that particular copy anymore.
You'll see they adhere to the non-drive side radial paradigm on their rims - Here's the Racing Zero.
I haven't ridden any Fulcrums, but I hear they are pretty stiff wheels.
Interestingly that while the Mavic Ksyriums did run a drive side radial lacing, I raced them for a season, they were quite stiff sprinting wheels which may also partially be a function of their proprietary spoke's thickness and hub design. But the Zipp101's that I used to run which also had radial drive side lacing were the noodliest accelerating wheels I ever rode by far, possibly due to the thinner Sapim CX-Ray spokes, but it was probably a combination of the low spoke count, lacing, and hub design. Don't quote me on this but I believe Zipp uses their particular spoke pattern to maximize flange width and gain an extra mm or so on the drive side which would contribute to lateral stiffness. Just a point to note, rotational stiffness and lateral stiffness are different things imo. While I imagine lateral stiffness would be an asset to cornering and descending, rotational stiffness would be and asset to torque delivery i.e. for sprinting/accelerating. Surprisingly I don't see the differentiation in print much but it should be obvious to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of high school level physics i.e. force vectors. That's just my opinion.