vittoria – UK GRAVEL COLLECTIVE

I imagine the guys at Vittoria UK who very kindly sent me these tyres to review are wondering when the heck the review is going to be published! The thing is though I really wanted to try these Vittoria T60 in the conditions that Vittoria claim they excel in, namely “mixed” conditions. As anyone who lives in the UK will know we have had basically no rain from the end of April to just a few weeks ago in September. It’s been wall to wall drought, hosepipe bans, dry resevoirs and people who really shouldn’t be, wearing next to no clothing! So that’s my excuse, I was waiting for the conditions to become anything but loose and dusty to really try out these tyres. Finally we are back to relative normality and there is actually mud on the trails so here’s the review.

Lets talk about the colour first. if you hate tan wall tyres you are not going to enjoy these, the reason they are this colour and have the “Pro” designation is that these tyres are built with 92% renewable and recycled materials! Vittoria even warn on their website that the colour of any two tyres might not match as the recycled materials making up the tyre may differ. How cool is that! For those who like a black tyre or just a black tread and tan sidewall don’t fret, the normal “T60” is there for you but you will be missing out on, and I’m going to quote here…

So, a lot to take on board really, there’s the feel good factor of using a product that uses recycled materials and that is great, I’m all for it but are they actually any good as a tyre? I’ll admit i was sceptical. I went through the 1980-90s MTB phase of biscuit coloured tyres that looked awesome (look it was 40 years ago!) but fell into one of two camps when it came to performance. they, depending on the manufacturor were either super soft and grippy compound that were fantastic off road but literally “sucked” on tarmac and almost wore out on one ride or were such a hard compound they lasted forever but were as grippy as a week old dead mackeral on a bar of wet imperial leather soap. So you can see I didn’t have a lot of confidence in fancy coloured tyres and was probably biased against them from the start. As i fitted them (easy to tubeless up and pop on the bead as it happens) I was telling myself to keep an open mind.

Spoiler alert, 3 months on the nightmare of biscuit coloured tyres has faded into the backround with leg warmers, ra-ra skirts and the ill-advised curly perm back mullet I thought was fab. These tyres are great!

Vittoria say that these T60 pro tyres are 7% faster, 9% grippier, and 34% more puncture resistant than their competitors. Sounds all a bit too racy for me. i’m sure you, like me don’t really care how they handle a typical gravel race course, we are more interested in how they deal with off camber singletrack, roots, bricks someone has thrown down so they can stepping stone over a large puddle and whether they drag on tarmac so much that you get to the cafe after all the best cake has been taken by your mates.

So lets go over that, on tarmac, yes they do offer more drag than a semi or slick tyre, you won’t want to be running these if you join your local road bike club run. However they are not that bad at all, there’s a tiny rumble on the blacktop as they zip along but it’s nothing to stress about loss of watts over. Flick off that tarmac onto a section of off road, be it hardpack, loose stones (actual gravel then), grass or mud and they really come into their own.

The Vittoria Pro T60s are grippy when climbing and confidence inspiring when leaning the bike over in turns. I’ve got the 45mm versions and they feel comfortable on washboard terrain. i’m running them around 30psi front 35psi rear to make the most of the grip. The side knobs dig in when you lean the bike and bite then turning adding to the confident feel. Vittoria Pro T60 have a recycled nylon anti-puncture belt and sidewall protection but I’ve never felt that they lack suppleness. I’ve not had one puncture throughout the test period and that includes not topping up the sealant after the 30+ degree heat we’ve had (i finally dipped the valve and the tool came out dry…oops) I did have to top up the air a couple of times though, but thats probably because of the lack of sealant…*coughs*

Vittoria Pro T60 Gravel tyre no coffee seen 😦

Finally in the last few weeks I’ve been able to ride in wet conditions and all the above can be cut an paste here too. The tread will fill with really sticky mud but short sections of slightly drier ground in between and they do clear quickly. How they will behave in really deep muck remains to be seen but only a few of us are as daft as me and ride though that stuff rather than avoid it.

Since gravel biking became a thing (don’t message me with your proof of inventing it in the 1800s) tyres have been pretty specialised for certain tyres of riding. There are very few “all-rounders” that will happily do a bit of everything and do it to the point where you can leave them on all year round. The Vittoria Pro T60 has joined that exclusive club, non of the others though come with the eco-friendly credits that the Pro T60 does.

you can find more info on the tyres and the recycled nature of them here

*I think the fact that Vittoria call these a “race” tyre will put off more riders than it’ll attract, which is a shame as they are a great tyre, so ignore that name if it does.

I always find reviews for gravel bike tyres quite contentious as obviously the reviewer doesn’t ride the same local trails as I do. One riders “gravel” can vary wildly from anothers. Some stick to fire roads, others live in a gravel nirvana like Aberfoyle whereas my local riding is a mix of mud, roots, fire roads, singletrack, bridleways all of which can be sunbaked like concrete or resemble a swamp with patches of cookie dough, somtimes in the space of a few miles on the same day. Once in a while I actually get to ride on actual gravel!

So you can see any tyre that comes to me for a review is going to be properly put to the test, even in conditions they are not really designed for, such is the uniqueness of the UK gravel scene.

Luckily, and I say lucky for you the reader and not me the rider, we have had both biblical rain adding to the already saturated ground and 35 degree temperatures during the weeks I’ve been testing these two tyres from Vittoria.

I really like how Vittoria catergorise their tyres, the higher the number, the more knobs/aggressive the tyre is so lets start low and work up. Both tyres were set up tubeless with Vittoria’s own sealant on my usual wheels. No punctures occured throughout the test and this might be down to Vittoria’s use of a anti-puncture belt in the construction of both models tested. Both tyres also benefit from Graphine empregnated rubber for suppleness and longevity, “endurance” casing and reinforced sidewalls.

The Vittoria Terreno T50 is what used to be called a semi slick tyre, it has low height knobs in the centre that graduate to much higher knobs on the shoulder of the tyre. Vittoria says the tyre has great efficiency between pavement and off road and I tend to agree. The centre section gives a consistant roll along ability with a near silent performance. The version I tested was the largest avaliable at 50mm. This big size didn’t add any noticable drag on tarmac or hard packed trail and I was very glad of the extra volume on rough ground. When the trails became damp I was able to adjust the air pressure for a little more grip to counteract any slide that occured. The side knobs look quite aggressive but when cornering the transition from almost slick to knobbles was smooth and predictable. Any wobble on this type of tyre is usually much more pronounced when cornering hard on tarmac, more so than on dirt. The T50 did not suffer this and I became confident that I could really lean the bike over in turns. The shoulder knobs came into their own when the going got a lot more loamy and would bite into the trail and grip just when you though traction had gone. You need to get a few rides under your belt to get used to this but once learned you are able to use this to your advantage. That said, extreme mud conditions as you’d expect aren’t this tyre’s forte but as an allrounder with a drier conditions bias they one of the best tyres I’ve tried.

I had a couple of comments on social media that said the tyres wear out quickly, I put around 300 miles on the tyres and I couldn’t see any discernable wear. This also included a long lock up skid when a car tried to T-bone me. I did leave some of the rubber from the side knobs on the giy’s front bumper though!

the Vittoria Terreno T70 is Vittoria’s very successful and popular “Mezcal” MTB tyre in gravel form. It has more agressive centre knobs than the T50 but these are placed in such a way that they almost form a central ridge that the tyre rolls on. This reduces rolling resistance a lot and there didn’t seem to be any drag, although there is a pleasing buzz to them when crusing on tarmac. Off road the T70 had to cope with quite a lot as I managed to find much muddiness. The T70 coped admirably though and traction and turning wasn’t an issue. As you can see from the picture that tacky clay/mud will build up on the tyres at slow speed but once you get the wheel spinning again they do clear quickly. In all other conditions from damp to desert (it did get dusty for a couple of days, a guy can dream!) they are in their element and although these were only 45mm in width I found them perfect for my local riding, in fact I think the 50mm version might be overkill for these tyres.

If I had to chose between the two tyres it would come down to what time of year it was, late spring-summer-early autumn I’d run a T70 on the front wheel and a T50 on the rear for some turn in bite at the front and less rolling resistance and predictable breakway at the rear. The rest of the year and If I could only run one model it would be the T70 as it could cope with anything the UK could throw at it barring extreme weather.

you can find out more about Vittorria’s gravel range on their website Vittoria.com

Tag: vittoria

Vittoria Pro T60 Gravel Race* Tyre Review

Vittoria Terreno T70 and T50 Gravel Tyre Review