Aero gravel
Aero that
survives gravel
Gravel punishes anything twitchy and bans anything that takes your hands off the brakes. That rules out most ways of getting aero. It does not rule out ours.
The aerobar problem
Mass-start events ban
the obvious answer
Aerobars are contentious in gravel racing: the advantage is real at race pace, and the extra hand position genuinely relieves fatigue over very long events — but mass-start events ban them, because nobody wants unfamiliar riders alongside them with hands away from the brakes and compromised steering.
Paraphrased from BikeRumor.com, January 2023
Unbound has banned aerobars and extensions, and it is not alone. The organisers are not wrong: a rider in extensions in a nervous bunch on loose surface is a hazard to everyone around them. But the aero problem does not go away because the solution was banned. You still face the same headwind for the same eight hours.
Our answer is legal everywhere, because your hands never leave the bar and the brakes are always under your fingers. The width comes out of the drops instead.
What gravel demands
Surface
Stable when it is loose
On rough ground an upright posture wins most of the time — you see further and react sooner. That needs normal to wide-ish tops. Narrow tops on loose, slippery surface are exactly what you do not want, and neither are drops that flare outward and push your gaze down just to find stability.
Exposure
Long, open, windy
Gravel courses run exposed for hours at a stretch. When the road opens and the wind is straight down the barrel, drop in and take the reward — then come back up for the technical sections without stopping to reconfigure anything.
Duration
Eight hours, not eighty minutes
One position for a whole day is what wrecks people. Alternating between fast tops and fast drops spreads the load across different muscles and different contact points. More support means more comfort, which means more watts left when it matters.
Largest size. Every size tapers inward by the same 20%.
Big on top.
Tight underneath.
Go big where control and vision matter, then take the aero when the road opens up. At 46 cm on the tops you still get 37 cm below — on demand, in an instant, without moving your hands off the controls.