The Arizona edition of the Belgian Waffle Ride acts as the unofficial curtain-raiser for the US gravel racing season and Sofía Gómez Villafañe used this year’s edition to test what appears to be an unreleased Specialized tyre.
Gómez Villafañe rode to a convincing win in the elite women’s field, finishing 20 minutes ahead of Courtney Sherwell, on a Specialized Crux fitted with a new Specialized Tracer gravel tyre on the rear.
The Tracer is part of Specialized’s current line-up of gravel tyres, but this new model looks to have a revamped tread pattern, with more aggressive and widely spaced lugs compared to the existing tyre.
For gravel racers, it’s likely to be better suited to loose conditions than the Specialized Pathfinder – one of the most popular gravel tyres out there, but best saved for hardpack conditions.
We can’t quite make out the size of Gómez Villafañe’s tyre but, with the trend in gravel being for ever-wider rubber, we’d expect Specialized to reflect that in the options available.
Specialized simply pointed us to its stock ‘Project Black’ statement when we asked about the prospect of a new Tracer: “Specialized relies on feedback from professional athletes in both developing and testing advanced pre-production products in real-world applications,” reads the statement.
“With this top-level feedback, some of these design elements and products eventually show up in future retail product offerings. We call this Project Black.”
Business up front, party at the rear
Gravel racers are getting ever-more experimental with their tyre setups, with big rubber now commonplace – and some riders even opting for mountain bike tyres, if their frame offers the required clearance.
Gómez Villafañe used something of a mullet setup in Arizona, with Specialized’s new Air Trak MTB tyre on the front and the Tracer gravel tyre on the rear.
Mullet bikes are more common in mountain biking, pairing a 29in front wheel with a 27.5in rear – business at the front, party at the back – while it’s also common for mountain bikers to use front- and rear-specific tyres to fine-tune speed and grip.
While we're familiar with mullet gearing in gravel, a mullet approach to tyre choice is less common. However, Lachlan Morton used a 50mm-wide Vittoria Terreno Dry and 44mm Vittoria Mezcal en route to winning the 2024 edition of Unbound, taking advantage of all the available clearance on his Cannondale SuperSix EVO CX SE frameset.
Back to Gómez Villafañe’s bike, and the Air Trak, which pairs a low-profile centre tread with more pronounced cornering blocks, has just been released and is part of a new XC line-up that also includes the Fast Trak.
The Air Trak is said to be the faster of the two and has a claimed weight of 575g in a 2.2in width. It’s also available in a 2.35in width, at a claimed 585g.
Specialized is offering the Air Trak and Fast Trak – the latter more of an XC all-rounder with chunkier tread to match – in Flex Lite and Grid Lite casing options. Flex Lite is the lightweight, supple option, while Grid Lite adds sidewall protection.
MTB tyres in gravel races appear to be here to stay, so expect to see more of the Air Trak this year. As for the Tracer, watch this space for more.
