Today Vittoria launches its updated gravel range, adding a new gravel tyre liner and a T50 mixed terrain tyre.
It also renames some tyres in order to help riders find the right tyre for their planned terrain. Not sure if your gravel is closer to road or MTB? They’ve also got a new gravel rating system to help you pick the right rubber for the job.
Vittoria is one of those increasingly rare breed of companies that does just one thing. Their thing is bicycle tyres, and tyre accessories. They don’t make tyres for cars, and they don’t make wheels. Just bicycle tyres. Do one thing, and do it well, perhaps?
Tried and tested
The tyres have been developed in their labs and the real world, with machines to measure things like grip, vibration transmission, and rolling performance providing data to back up what riders ‘feel’. Outside the labs (where photos are forbidden), there’s a purpose built track complete with different types of paved and gravel surface, as well as mountain bike features. Want your rocks or tarmac wet? They’ve a sprinkler system for that. There’s even a section of tarmac with street features like tram lines, painted road markings, and pot holes.
All this adds up to a tyre range that Vittoria has tried to optimise for different conditions. And to make sure you don’t screw up all that work by running your tyres at the wrong pressure, there’s also their tyre pressure calculator to help you pick the sweet spot between speed, comfort and grip.
Grade my gravel
We all know there’s a huge range of what is considered ‘gravel’, with last year’s nearly-a-road level Gravel World Championships proving the case. Vittoria has come up with a surface grading spectrum to help you match what you think is gravel to the terrain they had in mind for each tyre. Especially if you’re new to choosing off-road tyres, this should help make it easier to get the right rubber for the job.
Alongside the gravel grading, they’ve renamed the gravel tyre line up. When we reviewed them before (and found them rather good), they were under the Terreno ‘wet’, ‘mixed’ and ‘dry’ names, as well as the Mezcal. That’s now all changed, with everything being a Terreno T-something. Terreno T-10 for your almost-a-road conditions, through to Terreno T-90 for mud. The more rough your conditions, the higher a T-Value you look at. Construction will be split into ‘sport’, ‘endurance’ and ‘race’, with ‘sport’ offering a more limited range of non-tubeless options. It’s the endurance range where the choices really lie, with 40, 45 and 50C options. All come with a nylon casing, and graphene incorporated into them for puncture protection.
New Terreno T50
- Price: £54.99
The Terreno T50 is a new tyre added to the range to cater for mixed conditions in the middle of that gravel grading. Less chunky than the old Mezcal (now known as a T-70), it’s got a fairly fast rolling centre, decent sized outer lugs for grip, plus transitional lugs so there’s no sudden gap between just rolling along and leaning into a corner.
New sidewall colours
Moving away from its traditional dark grey sidewalls, the endurance range will come in black or brown sidewalls. They’re very much a dark brown rather than a pale tan.
Ebike rated
The endurance line up comes marked ‘ebike rated’. This means they’re considered tough enough to withstand the extra weight that comes with many e-bikes, or the extra laps you might find yourself doing. Both of which are qualities which might surely transfer well to someone long haul riding with panniers or a heavy touring load?
New Airliner Light Gravel
- Price: £54.99
For extra peace of mind – and comfort- you might want to consider a tyre liner. Vittoria’s new gravel airliner has been designed to be so light that there’s no reason not to have them. They’ll only add 40-45g per wheel. Using a tyre liner lets you run lower pressures, offering more comfort and grip with better sidewall support and pinch flat protection. These new liners also come with a ‘run flat’ guarantee, where the liner will expand to protect your rim for many miles of riding (although you’ll need to replace the liner once you get home). In the park, they’ve tested the ‘run flat’ capacity for around 25km at an average speed of 20km/h. Enough to get you home, probably.
Tyre liners have something of a reputation for being difficult to fit, so Vittoria was keen to have us try and fit them. Without a bin to lean on in sight, I was able to fit these using mostly thumb and finger power, without too much of a sweat. Their tyre levers (£5.99) made pretty light work of the final snap into place. If tyre levers alone aren’t enough to unseat them (perhaps if the sealant has dried and glue it all into place) there’s also their tyre squeezing Air Liner Tool (£29.99) to help pinch the sidewalls off the rim.
The liners come with green valves that let the air in sideways and stop any clogging up with sealant. I suspect careful shopping would find other liner and sealant friendly valves would work too, but the green valves do make it easy to spot who is running these Vittoria liners. Apparently if you watch the pros closely, you might spot the odd green valve on a rider sponsored by another tyre brand.
Carbon footprint
Vittoria has calculated the carbon footprint of each product, so you can see the production cost of each item, and translate that into miles of cycling (instead of driving) that you’ll need to do to offset it.
My first impressions
I did get the chance to do one (pretty spritely paced) 37km ride on the T-50 with the new tyre liners included, and pressures set according to the calculator. The terrain was perfectly mixed, not in fact on the test track but instead on the Vittoria staff’s favourite lunchtime lap. Fine gravel, deep drifting pea-sized gravel, tarmac, steep pebble shaped cobbles, tarmac… there was even a bit of mud and a handful of roots. Hopping on an unfamiliar test bike with the brakes the European way round and then sprinting after a bunch of fast people who know the route very well can be a test of nerves. However, I barely gave thought to grip and handling as I kept with the pack. There were no weird squirrelly moments to distract from keeping the speed up. The ride stayed pretty comfortable even at speed over rougher sections, and putting down the power to close a gap didn’t feel dead or laggy. I can’t claim to test a tyre in one ride, but in these circumstances enjoying the ride and not feeling like you’re in a world of strange new sensations is a pretty good sign for a tyre.
There’s a suitably bonkers marketing piece about reaching ‘the sublime’, being at one with nature, and combining classical romantic art with bikes. TLDR? Have a great time riding your bike, get out and enjoy nature, spend less energy worrying about if you’ve got the right tyres for the job.
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If you haven’t tried liners for gravel use, you’re really missing an incredible combination of traction, ramp up and durability.