The general consensus around gravel tyres is that wider is faster. Professional riders like Dylan Johnson have been banging this drum for a few years now, and nearly every pro bike we saw at The Traka last year had the limits of clearance pushed to the point that paint was definitely going to be removed should things get muddy, which they did.
This has been somewhat fuelled by our own studies last year into road tyre width, where we concluded that wider road tyres were faster for nearly everyone, even going up to 40mm slicks.
Much of these studies, ours and others’, have been based purely around rolling resistance data, taken either from a rolling resistance rig, or by our preferred method of a pedalling efficiency rig, which we will come to in the methods section shortly.
The issue with taking only rolling resistance data is that it doesn’t account for the fact that wider tyres present a greater frontal area to the wind, and as such, should be less aerodynamic.
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The tyres
To test a full-width sweep with as many other variables remaining consistent throughout, we selected the Vittoria Terreno Dry as the model of choice. It comes in widths as skinny as 31c, and as wide as 2.4” (61mm), with plenty of options in between. Given that this test is about gravel tyres, we discounted anything below 37mm wide, both for time efficiency and because realistically most of you reading this probably aren’t considering…
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