Proves nothing. He could do the same run on the same bike and vary by more than a second.
Nico’s basically a bike-riding robot, his development testing is legendary. There was a wee interview a while back where he mentioned he’d got 2 axles, machined one of them down to make it less stiff, then done 2 days of shuttle runs to test them. 2 days! I trust it, personally, it is as good as a comparison as there will ever be.
But… This isn’t the only thing he thinks/knows makes him faster. He’s a flex obsessive, like above, machining down factory parts to make them less stiff. He’s absolutely right IMO, but the point is that Lapierre have never taken his results on flex and sold a “15% less stiff” bike. They cherrypick what sells from his ideas and ignore what doesn’t. A little well engineered flex works really well on a bike, but stiffness is easy to sell.
So what we have here isn’t “speed sells”, or a research led bike development programme, it’s “We want to sell a 650b bike. What do we have that we can sell it with”. Fact following form essentially. It’s like a Singletrack thread, decide what you think then google for evidence 😉
It’s not unlike Fabien Barel with Mondraker… When Fabien says that fugly stems are great, you hear about it because Mondraker want to sell bikes with fugly stems. When Fabien says everyone runs their suspension too soft, and that we should be running less travel, far stiffer, and only using our suspension to provide grip… Mondraker sell softly damped bikes like everyone else, because soft suspension feels nice on test rides and in shops.