I looked at my 14 gravel races in 2024 and average speed was under 21 mph (a few outliers being 18 and 24 mph).
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ThunderBurt Super Ground 2.1’s arrived….took about a week from the UK.
Won’t need or mount them for at least 2 months, but at least i have them in hand.
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That’s a sensible approach. To make it even more complicated, you could also pick a tire to specifically punish the competition on certain sections. If most people are going wider and wider but you know there are long pavement sections, you may run a tire even more leaned toward pavement just to punish everyone there. Obviously that has repercussions elsewhere, but it is a strategy to go way outside the curve.
We have a race by us in July that is majority smooth gravel, tons of pavement, one MMR where things go crazy for a couple miles, and one sandy section that is also short. I had slick gravel tires that were terrible in the sand but great everywhere else. One guy was just riding his Cervelo S5. It’s fun that people try different things and then see how it goes. But if everyone ran mtb tires in that race, they would get absolutely dropped before those tires got to shine.
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Nearly 700 posts, thousands of hours of tests, hundreds of hours of videos, the result…
It depends 
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That’s why I usually just go with the “run what ya brung” mentality. People have said this at nauseum, but I’ll repeat it, “no matter what tire you choose, you’ll have the right and wrong tire at some point on the course.” Just like the idea that a broken clock is right twice a day.
The mental fatigue that goes into tire choice is probably more detrimental then just running whatever tire is just sitting on your bike as we read this thread lol.
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I echo this. I had 42s on and everyone and their grandma was saying BIGGER tires and I just sat there the day before the race and said I am just gonna relax and run the 42s. Guess what they were totally fine and I loved them on the pavement sections and I saved 30min at least of my life switching tires last minute and wasting sealant and got a few more zzzzz’s before the night before. 10/10 would recommend lol
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Just in: Lab tested: What is the fastest gravel tyre setup?
Same test rig DJ used, but a much more detailed version of it.
Its behind paywall… but just add a javascript disable - enable add-on to your browser, and disable js.
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The more I research other tests performed on the SEE Pedaling Efficiency Rig the more confused I get by Dylan’s latest video and the function of the SSE-PER itself.
If you compare the base pavement numbers he recorded for the Race King and compare them to the average road tire tested by Bike Radar in 2023 at the SSE-PER - The Race King has around 3x the additional power requirement for the testing speed. This seems too incredible to be true.
There seem to be more supporting anecdotal claims (“data-driven anecdotes”?) that Bicycle Rolling Resistance relative rankings match reasonably close to real world testing using Virtual Elevation, AeroCoach, and other proxies.
I suppose there’s no conclusion, we’ll all do what we want and see what the next video says, but I don’t think this was a very robust result. Not because I don’t like what it says, but because it diverges so greatly from recent data and testing. I’m aware this sometimes indicates a breakthrough in technology, or testing. But it also sometimes indicates a failure of the test protocol.
I also think this would have been a constructive way to present the data but may have been detrimental to the overall message of the video. If you estimate the efficiency for the tires DJ tested, they vary so significantly I think it indicates a red flag with the test:
From here: Pedalling Efficiency Rig - Rolling Resistance Testing - Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub
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so how much savings by running a mtb tyre
Thanks for sharing this. It muddies the waters even further. At first glance back in the direction we were all at last month but upon closer inspection it’s something else.
This is on the tarmac surface option:
I have the 2.1 Terreno Dry, it is an absolute dog of a tire.
So in summary: DJ’s test showed that wider tires were faster on the cobble surface but slower on whatever surface they used for “pavement”.
The Cycling News test showed that wider tires were faster on the tarmac surface with no test on cobbles.
How are we to reconcile these results apparently completely at odds with each other?
We’re out in the wilds again I guess?
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2.2 looks to be 30w faster then the smaller tire at the lower speed.
My guess is the answer is that Dylan’s test used different tires while the CN test used the identical tire model, but different widths.
So when you factor in things like the knobs from a Race King 2.2, you are adding an element that is not reflected in the CN test and it stands to reason that knobs would add Crr when testing on simulated asphalt.
How much faster is a 2.2 over a 45mm?
According to @jkarrasch in one of his posts above…
To go for the Thunder Burt MTB tire over Continental’s fastest gravel tire (Terra Speed 45) on a 100 mile gravel course would save you around 26 minutes
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Except for the Race King, DJ used the exact same model in 35mm, 40mm, 45mm, and 50mm. At 36 kph (10m/s) on “pavement” DJ saw increasing CRR as size increased and Cycling News found the exact opposite trend at both 7m/s and 9m/s. So while each test used different tires from each other, they used the same model as they increased width and they’re suggesting opposing trends.
Man this makes me need to buy a new frame
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What were the tire pressures between the two tests? Dunno if the difference lies there or not. 
Right? I’m doing a race in April with a few buddies, two of which have first-gen Crux’s and limited to ~40mm. Keep telling them both that they need new frames before the race…and they should get them now before any tariffs hit.
Im sitting here with a 2 year old factor ostro gravel and seeing a different frame might allow me to save 30 min at unbound. When my goal is a podium, tough to not start trying to buy a new bike.
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Factor gravel can run pretty wide tires though right? I would think you can get a pretty quick setup on it especially if you go do a few tests and see what works best on your setup.