Last year at Eurobike Challenge Tire debuted a whole swath of premium performance handmade cotton race tubulars with a unique coating that makes them last longer than pretty much any other cotton tires on the market. They also more quietly showed just one silk tubular each for track, road & cyclocross racing use. Apparently those silk tires were a hit and at about 140€ a piece they are back for 2018 with five more tire designs getting the premium ~1000tpi silk treatment. Challenge is also adding a bit of a new look at the other end of the spectrum with a new natural rubber brown wall look to some of their affordable and popular gravel & cyclocross vulcanized clinchers.
Silk SETA extra handmade tubulars
Of course as #crossiscoming, we’ll start with those silk SETA extra cross tires. Now the silk cross tubulars are available in 33mm Baby Limus & Dune treads to join last year’s 33mm Grifo.
On the gravel side of things silk comes to the 30mm wide Strada Bianca handmade tubulars. Silk really excels at these two rough off-road disciplines as the natural silk fibers are both incredibly strong and more resistant than polyester or cotton. That lets Challenge hand make tires with a thread density more than 3x the best cotton tires, making them more supple at the same tire pressures for improved grip and lower rolling resistance. They are also naturally more resistant to rot from racing in wet conditions.
For road, TT & track racing the 22mm silk Pista is now joined by a 25mm Strada and 27mm Paris-Roubaix where improvements in grip & rolling resistance reduction also comes into play.
Vulcanized Brown wall clinchers
