Are gravel bikes faster on any route

General Discussion
1

As far as I can tell the Zwift gravel bikes are slower than the mountain bikes on the Jungle / Serpentine 8 courses, and slower than the road bikes elsewhere.

Is there a route / condition when a gravel bike would actually be the preferred chioce?

2

Not at this time…

I will echo Eric’s comments here:

  1. It’s a gravel bike: unfortunately, the way Zwift has set up its Crr and gravel bikes means they’re not the best choice on any route. Road bikes outperform them on tarmac, and mountain bikes fly past them on dirt roads.

Until Zwift changes the way their gravel bikes perform, gravel frames will remain quite unpopular in Zwift. Which is a shame, given how popular gravel has become outdoors! And while Lauf lovers may use the frame because they’re fans, given its lackluster performance, we highly doubt we’ll be seeing many Zwifters on the True Grit anytime soon.

3

I don’t think the end result will be Zwift changing the Crr of the gravel bikes, so much as opening up all of those ‘gravely’ roads in France at some point. Hopefully soon. The way things seem to be set up at the moment, the gravel bikes make no sense, from a performance POV, because riders are generally on pavement, or on gravel. And the only place with any significant gravel is the Jungle loop, which is long enough that it makes sense to switch to the MTB (unless, perhaps, you are in a group where the draft effect often offsets the combined time savings of the lower Crr of the MTB and the time stopped to switch bikes).

But, if you had a route where there were regular changes from pavement to gravel, as would appear to be the case if/when those side roads in France open, the gravel bike may actually end up being the best choice, as changing bikes that frequently would not be feasible. I think it will be similar to if the roads in the marina area of Watopia were repeated for many miles.

1 Like
4

Road to Ruins, the tarmac/gravel ratio makes the gravel bike faster than the MTB over this route.

I am sure I did an event in the past on this route and the choice was gravel or MTB, gravel bike was the bike of choice.