Increasingly, the cycling industry is realising the necessity of developing system-wide approaches to aerodynamics instead of looking at individual parts and cobbling them together without a thorough understanding of how they interact on the road. A good example of this in practice can be found in Formula One. Individual pieces of a car may appear less than optimally designed to move through the wind, but in concert, every bit works together to make the whole as quick as possible.
Of course, the engineering in motorsports must take very different speeds into account and also must factor in the downforce that keeps cars on track at these speeds, which are things not applicable to cycling. The fact remains, however, that the reason these cars have success in races is because the whole is engineered in concert. In many ways, cycling lags behind in this regard.
