How Much Slower Is A Gravel Bike?

Is the gravel bike truly the one bike that can do it all? They’re amazing, no doubt! But even still, the big question everyone wants answered is: how much slower is a gravel bike compared to a road bike? And importantly, will you be able to keep up with your mates on road bikes?

00:00 How much slower are gravel bikes?
00:32 Test Breakdown: Orbea Terra VS Orbea Orca Road
01:33 Gravel bike: 3 runs on each setup at 150w, 300w & 400w
02:58 Differences between these bikes
05:00 Road bike test!
05:56 The Final Test: Do tyres make the biggest difference?
07:56 What’s more important than speed?
08:57 What cycling is really about…
11:22 Results & Why

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the gravel bike the one bike to do it all and they are [Music] brilliant but the question we all want to know the answer to Is that if you ride a gravel bike how much slower is it than a road bike and crucially will you be able to keep up with your mates who might be riding road bikes how much harder are you making cycling today I will answer that question I have here an Ora Terror gravel bike and an Ora Orca road bike which despite the decals on the forks I have not stolen from the lotto Destiny World Tour team we’re going to see firstly just how fast a gravel bike is compared to a road bike when ridden at the same power outputs on Tac but then we’re going to see what happens if you swap out the wheels to give a gravel bike a road setup can we simply and quickly make a gravel bike as fast as a road bike I mean swapping out wheels is very easy and relatively inexpensive certainly compared to buying a new bike but then even if it does become as fast is that the only consideration is that what it’s all about philosophy with gcn coming up soon let’s Dive In [Laughter] okay the test is not a rocket science but I have the equipment the bikes and the time to do it basically I’m going to do three runs on each setup at different intensities so this current one is a chilled intensity 150 watts gravel bike territory then I’m going to step up to 300 watts see whether that additional velocity you get actually you end up seeing more of a distance distance see if you can end up seeing more of a difference and then finally someone has asked me to do 400 watts I don’t know what that’s going to show other than my limitations but anyway we’ll get it a go this one’s nice at least yeah yeah yeah yeah whose idea was this ow it hurts it [Music] hurts right before I swap from from gravel bike to road bike let’s quickly start to unpick some of the differences between the bikes that might help explain the results later on the major one of course is the tires but I’ll come on to that in a bit in terms of the actual Fram and setup road bikes can of course design to be aerodynamic certainly more expensive ones but that can be quite significant but then also not significant at the same time it depends on your perspective for a racer or someone who wants to as fast as possible it does make a measurable difference for most of us though that difference doesn’t really matter a far more importance to your efficiency is you and your position on the bike and gravel bikes tend to make you a bit more upright for comfort and control but that makes you less efficient at faster speeds effectively you yourself are less aerodynamic however on these two bikes that difference could be corrected really easily and relatively inexpensively simply by swapping these handlebars and this stem from this bike on to this bike what is more significant between the two is the weight difference now the orer I’ve got here is ridiculously light this terror is pretty blooming light as well but gravel bikes tend to have a little bit more material in them so they can be more robust dealing with rough off-road tracks and general abuse use and rock strikes and the like so that requires more material now in these two bikes the difference is about 1.3 kilos in percentage terms that’s not a great deal not if we look at the bikes on their own but if you include my weight as well so we get a system weight in this case I don’t think that’s going to influence the results at all although it would if I were to ride up an alp [Music] my position on this bike is different to the one on the gravel bike it’s a little bit longer but otherwise when you just sat like this cruising along at 150 wats it’s a bit smoother on this beautiful tarmac no uh vibrations coming from the knobbles on the tires but still feels good [Music] now the final test I mentioned earlier that tires were the most significant difference between the two bikes I think we will find out but as you can see I’ve just swapped the wheels from the AER onto the terror gravel bike now road tires of course are designed to roll smoothly and efficiently on tag they do not need to bite into mud and dust they do not need tread effectively tread which slows you down and the carcus of the tire also can be built differently because it doesn’t need to withstand sharp rocks and the like so that too therefore makes you faster so I would imagine this is a significant difference and one that’s been very quick to make because I have a second set of wheels now I appreciate not everyone can afford that but if you can then it definitely makes life [Music] easier feels very smooth feels very nice sat in the saddle going in a straight line you cannot tell anything whatsoever oh other than the fact that I’m not 150 watts come on then here we [Music] [Music] go uh not in terms of the speed really like this now feels as smooth as a road bike so it’s interesting to know whether or not it’s fast like a road [Music] bike okay here we go 400 WS last one it’s a bit of blooming show [Music] something before we dive into the results though I do want to talk about something that is even more important than speed because there is such a thing right if speed were the most important thing or going further for Less effort cuz it’s all tied together we would be riding very different bikes to the ones we’re on now now yes of course budget is a factor because aerodynamic bikes do not come cheap but all of us I think could afford clip on time trial bars that would make it more aerodynamic we could go further and faster for Less effort but very few of us choose to use them because performance is not the most important factor and if we were to take aerodynamics to its logical conclusion we would all be riding fully faed recumbent and even fewer of us choose to ride those although we do all know someone who takes it a little bit far you maybe need a bit more speed no typically cycling is not about performance yes we all want to make it easier on ourselves but really it’s about emotion it’s about fun it’s about feeling and I can’t ever escape the fact that one of the joys of a road bike is that it’s been tuned to be really really good at one specific thing it’s like like a poor man sports car maybe not poor man these days but compared to a Ferrari is still a sweet deal what I mean though is that irrespective of the difference between these two bikes they feel different and that’s not down to tires that’s down to the geometry of the bikes the Orca is 52 mm shorter from front wheel to back wheel compared to the gravel bike which makes it turn faster now crucially this isn’t something you only feel when cornering in order to balance on a bike you’re actually constantly turning it so the difference is something you can feel all the time but it it’s it’s most apparent when climbing out of the saddle you probably think I’m weird for putting so much emphasis on this but it is really really important because whilst agility and responsiveness of a bike doesn’t actually make it faster that agility and responsiveness just makes it feel more precise and sharper and it makes you feel like a climbing God no matter what your power to8 ratio is now more agile isn’t better absolutely not there is an art to bike design but it’s why for people who are used to riding a road bike riding a gravel bike on the road even with road tires on just doesn’t feel quite as good like these differences are fairly nuanced granted and really it’s only completely apparent when you’re riding out the cuz certainly cornering and descending on a gravel bike on the road feel brilliant in a different way but those moments of riding out the sadle they kind of add up and so it’s why irrespective of the results I’m about to give you for a died in the wo Road Rider getting on a gravel bike on the road just is going to feel slower but it is results time now you have waited patiently through gcn Do’s philosophy so let’s go for it the gravel bike was on average 2 kilometers per hour slower than the road bike now that difference was a little bit less at 150 wats a little bit more at 400 watts but there’s your result now in terms of that question about whether a gravel bite will make it harder to keep up with your mates yes I think clearly it will but it’s not a hugely significant difference I guess it depends on your perspective but to put it another way way if you were to tackle a 100 km charity bike ride on a gravel bike then you would probably find that it would take about I don’t know 20 to 30 minutes longer than it would do on a road bike however what about the wheel swap well the results here are slightly less clear frustratingly this experiment is of course open to errors but we can still see that the gravel bike is definitely faster as a result by about 1 to 1 and 1/2k an hour so still not quite as fast as a road bike it’s obviously not all about the tires but as we suggested earlier your body position is important too now again as we said earlier that’s something you could correct if you wanted to change the handlebars and stem but then there’s part of me that thinks well if you’re going to make your gravel bike set up like a road bike both in terms of position and also Tires and Wheels I mean is it still a gravel bike I don’t know let’s stay away from philosophy again shall we but nevertheless it’s good to know that that option is there now as for all that talk about feel earlier on I’m sure there are many of you out there thinking that I’m even more pretentious than I usually am but for others of you I wonder whether perhaps that will resonate so I’d be super interested to hear your thoughts down in the comments section firstly have the results surprise you is that more or less of a difference than you’re expecting and what about when we flipped out the wheels and then would you be happy with that difference in feel get involved in the comment section down below as I said be super interested to hear your thoughts please as well give the video a like if you’ve enjoyed it and we’ll see you on the next one