BRR just published the rolling resistance tests for the new Silca tires (protocol) and they are really disappointing (to me)
We are talking 10watts compared to the 5000Tt
I really thought this is something they would have nailed.
Maybe their gravel version will be better
Maybe real road testing will be better
Anyone on them ?
The pair they tested must of came out of the slow mold.
I must admit, I am very surprised, close to shocked.
I struggle to believe this is not something Josh tested extensively. I wonder if he will respond to it.
I check their gravel tire and it doesn’t do well either.
BRR usually does pretty well at a high level. But we have seen tires that performed quite differently on the road.
Sort of off topic as I have no new information to add about Silca vs other tires but:
I’m definitely a believer and convert to tire watt-savings! I know it’s ‘duh’ to the folks around here, but I had this play out in real time last year when I swapped to Gatorskins, and in retrospect, when I rode the cheaper tires my bike came with ContiUltrasport back until I finally swapped to GP5000s (luckily this was my road bike, not my racing TT bike which I did put GP5000s on.) Wow, tire differences are real, and the slow tires are really that slow. Put on the Gators thinking it would slow me down just enough to not drop my regular tri-diehard buddies I ride with whom I usually can put in 5mins/hr on race day on the bike, and similarly in training (I always have to wait or double back for them) but the Gators were so slow they dropped me by a bigger margin than I was dropping them. It was like I lost 3 levels of bike performance.
It also explained in retrospect why when I rode my road bike with Conti Ultrasports (came with the bike) we’d stay nearly all together, but on the days we took the TT bikes out, I was gone down the road, nearly instantly. I had thought it was due to my awesome TT aeroness, but in retrospect the far bigger and likelier factor was the tire difference. And when I finally got a sidewall cut in that ultrasport and swapped it to a GP5000s, I started putting similar big gaps on my training buddies same as the TT bike - on flats, hills, you name it. I’ve tried explaining this to them repeatedly afterwards, but they seem to be amnesia-skeptical - they all continue to talk to others in my tri circle that I got ‘really fast’ that year and probably did some crazy training, even though I keep telling them I was training the exact same, and only upgraded my tires.