As all my teammates have bought gravel bikes over the last few years, I’ve been racing/riding gravel on my XC full suspension MTB running 45’s and a few races on my Trek Madone rolling 28’s (hero or zero with flats). I kept telling them I’ll buy a gravel bike when someone comes out with an aero gravel bike with full suspension that weighs under 20 lbs. I basically wanted my Trek Madone with more compliance and ability to take 38+.
I finally gave in and bought a Trek Domane last week, which doesn’t exactly have suspension and isn’t super aero, but has a little of each. With the latest model, they added some of the Madone tube shapes and claim it’s a lot more aero than the previous version. It certainly looks more aero, but we’ll see. I’ll be swapping out the stock bar for an aero road bar and clip on aero bars. I’m a big fan of isospeed on my madone and only have it in back. My madone is really good in moderate gravel and broken pavement and I’ve got high hopes for the Domane running much larger tires and isospeed front and back. I went with the AXS force 2x road group, which should be good for most courses. On tougher courses, I’ve got the flexibility to throw on my Eagle AXS RD and 10-50 cassette from my MTB and just swap to a single chainring on the force crank.
I wasn’t trying to compromise on the gravel bike to use it on the road, I really just wanted a gravel bike that was as aero and compliant as possible. I will use if for some road riding, but that’s just a bonus.
I considered a Topstone with a lauf fork and also considered the new topstone with the low travel lefty fork for gravel. From an aero perspective, both of those would have sucked and the topstone has funky/unique crank spacing and and non-standard dish you have to do on the wheels.
I briefly thought the niner MCR was interesting with the rear suspension and low travel fox fork, but it’s not aero at all and it’s really heavy (significantly heavier than my MTB). At that point, I might have well just put drop bars on my MTB (which I considered).