Boost is the logical next step. With how often a lot of these “offroad racers” are switching between MTBs and gravel bikes, the Q factor is really not an issue. This is proven by the fact that many of these athletes are totally willing to ride Boost MTBs with drop bars.
Hopefully, the engineers in the industry can do some testing and find a somewhat future-proof solution that works and stick to it for a while. Then we’ll all be here wondering what to do with our “wide” cranksets & FDs. 
I have a feeling gravel bikes will adopt Boost when MTB have made the transition to something wider, ex. Super Boost. That’s how the industry operates.
I was talking about the MTB side of things, running 2.35’s on MTB trails then vs. the 2.2’s that came with the bike. And that was my gravel race bike at the time, would run anywhere from 45’s to 2.35’s for gravel racing depending on course. No drop bars, but it was a solid gravel race rig despite being full suspension and limited to a 38 chainring (the biggest challenge by far). I always got the “I can’t believe you are racing this on a MTB” like it should have been much harder, but the watts vs. speed made it very clear that it wasn’t much of a handicap at the time. Anyways, MTB’s on wide tires for gravel racing isn’t new (actually became less common for a while while everyone was launching “gravel” bikes), but it looks like it’s coming full circle back to MTB geometry and tire width.
Back to tires, we can debate when “most people” accepted that bigger/lower is faster on certain surfaces, but it’s been way more than 2 years from what I’ve seen. Even if you focus on gravel instead of MTB, its been a while. Since gravel started exploding in the US and all the OEM’s started making dedicated gravel bikes, supporting wider tires has been the biggest part of the arms race.
There’s currently no reason for XC bikes to get any wider. A lot of them can fit ~36t chainrings and 2.4" tires with room to spare on 52mm chainlines and still have short chainstays.
Trail bikes might be a different story. 55mm chainlines might be necessary there which would benefit from a wider rear end…
Not just trail bikes. SRAM transmission is supposedly optimized for a 55mm chainline and I have my Epic 8 XC bike running 55. I know transmission can also work with 52, but I could see 55 becoming the new standard for MTB over time. Since transmission pushes the cassette out a bit more than old eagle, I believe the 55mm transmission chainline setup provides about the same actual chainline as a 52mm chainline with the old eagle cassette spacing. Pushing the transmission cassette out also gives room for a 13th cog (at some point) without the need to go to superboost.
Specific to Gravel: What were the bigger tires people were using in 2019-2021? The Pathfinder Pro 700cx47 didn’t release widely until 2022, and it didn’t fit on many bikes from earlier years. Prior to that there were hardly any tires in 44-50mm sizes. 650b didn’t really have a foothold.
The bigger tires people were accepting were generally 35/38 to 42/43. Not 47s/2.0-2.2.
Gravel racers were generally not accepting of the idea that 2.1-2.2 XC tires are as fast or faster than gravel tires until very recently, and even now it’s not the general consensus. I mean go look at Torsten Frank’s thread and posts on this forum, and that was from last year.
Agree with that and I’m still in that camp as well (despite having run 2.2’s in multiple gravel events). Like most things, people want black and white and the answer is almost always grey. I believe 2.2’s make sense on some courses and 42’s are faster on others. And 47’s on others. I’m also not a big believer in drum resistance translating to real world use. Surface and speed dictate tire choice and wider/lower isn’t always better. But that’s a long way from the mindset of skinnier and high pressure provides the fastest option.
Not looking to debate the nuances of when the cycling community accepted that lower/bigger is often faster, it’s totally cool if we can agree to disagree on that point.
I agree with you and from my own personal experience wider and lower psi tires are way more comfortable and much better on sketchier descents and if they’re overall slower for me it’s not by much.
But I understand from those at the pointy end of races any bit slower may not be acceptable.
I’m currently running Vittoria mezcals 2.1. Not the fastest but they’re very comfortable which for my day to day training rides is important
I think it depends on what you are riding. I mean, if you you are riding chunky, loose gravel and some singletrack, absolutely. But if you are splitting time on the road and/or riding smooth dirt roads I still think a narrow(er) tire is going to be faster.
The tension disk was great. You could hear Johnny T coming a mile away.
I ride stuff more technical than Leadville on my gravel bike. I’ll be ok.
Just as wider wheels had to be invented, disc brakes for road had to be invented, etc. I mentioned MTB suspension as an easily understood reference point.
By which point the clear product trend was for road-style gravel bikes. Hell, the prevailing thinking until even just 3 years ago was that tires that were too wide would be slow on gravel. You think consumers were gonna jump from 35mm tires to 48-50mm tires at a time when 40’s were considered wide?
Great….i was riding gravel on road bikes at the same time in the canyons outside Boulder.
Anecdotal experience is meaningless. I am simply disputing, though professional experience and knowledge, the idea that there is some “planned obsolence” going on in ANY product development in the bike industry.
The reality is that the business is filled with a bunch of bike geeks trying to sniff out consumer trends and make cool schitt. The harsher reality is that the industry isn’t smart enough to be able to plan more than a cycle ahead of itself, primarily because you are dependent on so many different suppliers.
Iknow everyone likes to point to this as a sort of pioneering bike, but it is actually the complete opposite. Tomac road drop bars because he was riding for 7-11 on the road and they wanted him to keep his same position on the MTB as his road bike.
It eventually proved to be a horrible idea as he compromised handling and performance to achieve a position that was horrible for off road riding. It was very reactionary, old school euro thinking in its genesis.
My 2017? Cutthroat was speced with thunderburts. Salsa so ahead of the curve with that mosel.
I tried the drop bar setup for gravel. Core4 normally has around 9 miles of mtb singletrack in a 50-60 mile course but this year only did 4 miles due to rain so it wasn’t ideal. But it was still interesting to try it out. The B roads were easy and comfy vs have to be vigilant on a normal gravel bike setup. This was my first ride with race kings and I really liked them, feels like they just float over the gravel and don’t have to worry about how rough it is.
It was just two years ago that Stetina ran a 33mm rear and a 36mm front at SBT GRVL.
I just want to see a CX racer with flat bars.
Not allowed
Can’t find it now but IIRC, Travis Brown is a long-time disrupter in the cycling world that I think ran CX races with his MTB back in the mid '90’s and later. I remember hearing about him bunny hopping barriers and maybe even riding up stair sets to the dismay & disgust of CX purists.
I found a related article of him running drop bars on MTB for some CX races too.
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/tech.php?id=tech/2003/news/nov20
