Adding my 2 cents here.. For chunky gravel roads where I used to live (Midwest - Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, etc..) the 2.2 MTB tires are usually the best choice BUT don’t forget that a lot of people ride a lot of pavement on their gravel rides as well as much smoother gravel/dirt like I do now in Colorado. The Racekings are much slower than my pathfinder s-works and Schwalbe G-one RS tires for my riding here in CO. Different tires excel for different courses and for many folks the 40-45mm tires make more sense. All of us on this forum are the nerdy tire guys and gals but most people don’t need a hyper optimized option for their casual rides. Since those are 99% of riders, that is who the tire companies cater to.
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Half the course you need 32 and the other half 2.2” tires. Looks like he split the difference. 
It’s interesting to me the road and mtb tire markets very much cater to the optimize/go fast markets… which is also generally much appreciated by casual riders in both disciplines.
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5mm is too big of a jump for Gravel.
35-40-45-50 is silly when both MTB and Road enjoy smaller gaps
23-25-28-30-32-35
51-53-55-58-60
Gravel should have more options given the variety of clearance demands, and terrain:
35-38-40-42-45-47-50
Brands seemed to have killed 38/42/47 this year without explanation. Perhaps there is some reason we cannot be made aware of at the actual production source that precludes more sizes, right now.
Specialized gravel tires only had one price increase since 2021 of $5/10% - and that was in 2022/2023. There must be something holding down the price if it can be sustained even with an entirely updated lineup.
I also think, and history seems to show, that people might not need hyper-optimized set-ups, but they sure like buying them and riding them. People suffered their entire cycling lives on ~21-23mm tires optimized for European road racing when they were riding solo on much rougher American roads. People, now, are riding MTBs so overbiked for their local it’s like riding a sidewalk in the woods. Someone is watching all the MTB-as-Gravel-tire videos…
https://www.bikeradar.com/news/hutchins … l-all-road
Hutchinson Caracal Race 45mm coming in June.
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That’s awesome. I’d be curious to see how much the puncture belt increases rolling resistance. If it’s similar to the Thundero HD at ~10% that would only drop it down to GP5000 AS level. Which wouldn’t be too bad all things considered.
Nothing crazy new but thought the convo with Maxxis was a good one.
If I read correctly, the puncture belt is only in the smaller 35mm version. I’d guess that will almost certainly tank the performance of that tire, but thankfully it’s the 45 that will interest most of us and I don’t see any mention of a belt in that one.
I’m guessing it’s one of those things where the casing is just so thin that it was unusably delicate at 35mm pressures, but the bigger sizes were allowed to retain their initial construction because they’re run at lower pressure and won’t cut as easily.
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I was looking for a faster option than the Race Kings for smooth and pavement rides and considered to buy the Schwalbe Pro RS. However, according to BRR the Raceking were measured at 14.5 Watts CRR: 0.00435 and the Schalbe Pro RS 40 are at 15.7 Watts CRR: 0.00471. This does not indicate that the Pro RS are really faster. These are the value for pavement, so if you enter gravel sections the difference will not be smaller.
I’ve been using the Rene Herse Corkscrew Climb endurance the last few weeks and they feel great. I know bicyclerollingresistance.com doesn’t show a glowing review, but they feel like a better all around tire than the G-One RS 45mm I was using the previous 6 months, especially off the asphalt.
I get your point and recognize the data from BRR, but I am speaking from an N=1 perspective that when I ride my usual zone 2 loop that is 75% paved and 25% dirt road. The Pathfinders and G-One RS are definitely faster for the same power than the RK’s on that loop for me. This is consistent over probably 200+ rides on this loop over the past few years. Maybe it’s tire pressure differences or something, but I’ve never found RK’s to be faster on smoother roads. I don’t pump them up more than 25-27 psi though. Just my own experience
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Makes sense to me. If it was 75% dirt the results might be flipped. Grip is good (and an underrated part of the “fast tire” equation IMO) but will slow you down on the pavement.
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I think this Dylan Johnson video does an excellent job illustrating exactly what you mean when you say that you feel the Patherinders/G-Ones feel faster than the RK. The 35mm gravel tire is massively faster on pavement than the RK, but the RK is massively faster in the cobble simulation.
Your route being 75% road definitely favors the G-One RS IMO. There’s definitely some math to be done here on each specific route to pick the correct tire for the fastest time.
I do a route that’s 60% pavement and 40% singletrack and my choice is the RK. I think a narrow gravel tire would give me a faster overall average speed, but it would be miserable on the single track and actually the pavement section isn’t the fun part of the ride for me, so I would rather setup my bike for the fun bit.
I don’t think this video was indicative of effective testing and should probably be taken down, for the same basic reasons the GCN shoe test at Silverstone was taken down.
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How do you figure that? The results basically align with common sense. There’s really no ground breaking new findings. His conclusion is that skinnier tires are more aero and faster on pavement while wider tires are faster over the rough bits.
They don’t align with anything else, including other tests on the same equipment with similar/same tires. The test result also didn’t align with his own testing performed previously, nor the testing from other members of his cohort on Bonkbros.
35mm Pirelli Cinturatos cannot be 32.6w faster than Race Kings, on pavement. Something was wrong with the test, his bike, the tires, or himself.
Cycling news found opposite results at the same lab, with higher CRR tires, using the same pavement test roller.
I don’t believe “common sense” has much relevance in our modern times. How many years ago was everyone sure that 23/24/25mm tires were absolutely faster on pavement always? 4-5?
There was a lot of discussion when the video came out here: Is a MTB tire the fastest and best tire for Gravel racing? - #926 by crandallGA
I haven’t seen anything to change my opinion. The R Chung testing from John Karrasch seems more relevant and reliable.
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The article you linked is behind a paywall so basically useless to me. However, if all of the different folks testing these tires come up with different results they’re all worthless. Just pick whichever you agree with most.
I personally have three bikes my road bike has 28/32mm GP5K, my cyclocross bike has 40mm Terra Speed, and my mountain bike has 2.2 Race Kings. Oddly, I’m also not convinced that my current 28/32 setup on the roadie is any faster than my old 25mm tires. My average speeds haven’t really changed in any noteworthy way. I do notice that the 28/32 setup is definitely more comfortable on gravel than the 25s though.
I notice that my road bike is the fastest of the three by far on my local 40 mile route that’s about 50/50 pavement/smooth gravel, the cyclocross bike just kind of feels slow and generally is slow compared to the road bike, and my hardtail is the slowest of the bunch but actually is surprisingly close to the cyclocross bike. However, when I do routes that are actually rough, I know which bike I’d rather be on and it’s not either of the two skinny tire bikes. I think this experience for sure correlates with his findings… aka “skinny” tire fast on pavement, “fat” tire fast on rough terrain.
That’s not what is happening. Much of the testing points in the same direction, the SSE-PER results from Dylan do not. As we move further away from them in time, it seems more likely they are an outlier indicating a failure of the test or equipment, and not of a technical breakthrough.
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Ben Delany has a conversion with just about every tire manufacturer in this video from sea otter. A lot of marketing spin in the mix, but a pretty good run down of what’s out there, what’s new, and a few hints at what’s coming. Short story - pretty much everyone now has a 50mm (or larger) gravel tire.
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I think we need to shut this thread down and go back to the mtb/gravel tire thread.
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