[Lio]

It's actually been tested and modern fabrics are better than bare skin for drag.

In Michael Huchinson's Faster[1] it mentions that they tested a rider naked in a wind tunnel to find out!

If you look at a modern TT skinsuit you can see that they try to cover as much of the arms and legs as possible. They usually stop above the elbows and knees because it's hard to cover the joints without wrinkles.

Likewise, socks are now as long as permissible (without breaking the UCI sock rules!), which I think is about halfway up the calf. It would be faster to cover all the way up to the knee joint.

It all sounds silly if you don't race but if you've put some effort into getting fit then after awhile it's hard to gain even 5 or 10 more watts. If you can reduce your drag by more than that just by wearing a better pair of socks... well why would you?

BTW I have a Brookes on my commuter Brompton too. :D

1. http://www.michaelhutchinson.co.uk/faster.html