Hey Guys,
I recently picked up a set of 28mm Goodyear Eagle F1 TLR in 28mm. I had run them for a few months. However two months ago I came off in mildly wet conditions on a descent that I’ve ridden 100s of times.
I was pretty banged up and have really lost my nerve with descending now that I’m recovered and back on the bike. I’m wondering if anyone has experience with the F1s?
It may not have been the tyres, it could have been oil on the road, or a hundred other things i know.
I’ve previously been running schwalbe one TLR and GP5000 and have not stacked a road bike in over 10 years.
Whilst I’ve no experience of them myself, it was probably oil, going by bicycle rolling resistance they are slightly more grippy than their competitors (including the 5000 TL’s and Schwalbe Pro Ones.
Road.cc gives them a good review too
the Eagle F1 tubeless rolls well, and grips well in both dry and wet weather
Motor racing shows us what rubber sticks the same amount in the dry sticks in the wet. You have the same amount of grip until pooling forms, causing you to hydroplane (which isn’t a problem with a road bike tire). Once you start sliding in the wet, it’s harder to re-grip, which doesn’t matter on a bicycle because you’re on your a** then. The other key difference is that oil and coolant screw up your grip.
Motorsports use rain tires, which are just lower temp range “soft” rubber tires with anti-hydroplane grooves on them. They can do this because the water cools the tire.
Thanks for the tips and info guys. I know it’s probably in my head.
I went on my first proper outside ride after the crash on the weekend that had proper descents and some water around and I literally could not tip the bike into corners at all. I felt like I was on ice.
I would generally class myself as an above average rider/ descender with a long history or MTB and Motorsport.
I guess a follow up is regaining your nerve after a big crash?
I don’t have heaps of time to ride outside these days which doesn’t help. We just had our third kid coming along this week!
I had the same thing a few years ago after sliding out three times in the wet. I had cheap tyres, and switched to Schwalbe pro ones, which seem to have more grip in the wet. It takes a bit to re-gain confidence, but it’ll come.
The other thing that might have happened has to do with tyre shape - I used to run 35mm tyres on narrow-ish rims, and I think the bulged-out shape meant the bike cornered a bit weirdly. There was some sort of tipping point, over which it lost grip rapidly. I don’t know how wide your rims are, but if you’ve recently changed to wider tyres, that might also be an issue?