[By Steve Thomas]
The Challenge Getaway handmade gravel tyre is billed as a very grippy, fast-rolling and highly puncture-resistant option designed for top-end hardpack performance. It’s certainly not a cheap tyre but has a tactile ride quality that’s hard to rival.
As an Italian company, the brand is well known for its handmade off-road rubbery excellence, and the tyres are often considered something of a premium and niche brand in the UK. The Challenge Getaway was first introduced late in 2020, and has evolved some since then - and now comes in 36mm, and 40mm (tested) widths, with a 45mm width option soon to be added to the range.
> Buy now: Challenge Getaway Handmade Gravel Tyre from Tweeks Cycles for £57.60
Challenge’s range of the best gravel tyres has earned an equal amount of respect on the US gravel racing scene. The Getaway is its most aggressive offering in the tread department but does it make the cut on the varied and often muddy trails of the UK?
Challenge Getaway tyre – Technical details
The Challenge Getaway is tubeless ready, has a natural light tan colour and a very supple 260tpi SuperPoly Corazza Armor casing with Aramid beading. It also benefits from the brand's Ganzo PPS2 puncture protection system sandwiched between the casing and relatively soft compound rubber.
The tyre is dome-shaped with a directional studded centre tread line while the side knobs become much more spaced out towards the sides of the tyre, thus allowing for a fair degree of mud clearance. Being handmade they do vary slightly in weight, with 465 grams being the benchmark for the 40mm version we tested, although they can be a few grams either side on this.
Challenge Getaway - Fitment
These tyres stand out right from the box. Not only because of the retro-looking sidewalls but because they lie almost flat, which is mostly down to their high 260tpi carcass. This makes for a very supple tyre and something not too unlike that of an open (unstitched) tubular.
I fitted these onto Hope 20FIVE rims, which have a 24mm external width and 20mm tubeless ready interior span. These rims play nicely with recommended tyres up to 40mm wide, although I have been running 43mm with no issues.
With travel and regular tyre switches on the horizon I opted to use inner tubes, although Challenge does also recommend using its own sealant should you choose for tubeless which is more suited to the handmade and supple casing.
Make no mistake about it, these are not easy tyres to fit. That said, they have tweaked the design very recently, and having wrestled with an older version of the tyre I can confirm that the latest Getaway is a far easier mount.
They are still quite tight and sit completely flat on the rim when first mounted, which makes it tricky to see what you’re doing when using tyre levers, or the brand's own Clincher Mounting Tool.
With the first tyre I got away with a sturdy tyre lever, but the dedicated clincher tool was needed for the second. Seating the beads was a breeze and, at 40psi, they were in place and ready to roll.
Challenge Getaway - Performance
The Getaway is recommended to be run at between 25-45psi, and despite being 1.84m and 83kg I do tend to roll at around 30psi on wider gravel tyres, and a little bit higher for tyres narrower than 40mm. Initially, I went by feel rather than the gauge and started out with a couple of rides at 30psi, and then moved to 40psi before finding my personal sweet spot at 35psi sweet spot on these tyres.
The ride quality of these tyres is sublime. If you’ve never ridden such supple tyres or good tubulars, then it can be a tad unnerving at first, in that they feel so soft and plush and they tend to flex and mould to the road or trail. They offer great all-round grip; but with an extremely tactile feel to them, which you soon get used to.
Tyre pressure accuracy with the Getaway is more important than with most other tyres, as they feel different even with small changes. At a lower pressure they were a bit sluggish on road sections, but very comfortable and shock absorbent off road – and gripped really well on hardback gravel, smaller stony trails, in the sand and dirt, and even in light mud – although their tread pattern is not well suited to seriously deep or sticky mud and gloopy clay riding.
With a little extra air pressure, the tyres hold a similar level of grip, still have that comfort level of a wider tyre and roll very well on hard pack and road sections, where the centre line of tread makes most of the contact with the ground.
Challenge Getaway - Verdict
Priced at £80, the Challenge Getaway tyres are built for out-and-out performance and possess a level of comfort and a tactile handling nature that you rarely find in anything other than a high-end tubular. They are very well suited to fast-rolling, hardpack trails but aren't the greatest in serious mud.
The supple casing and trail-holding rubber combined with their effective puncture protection make them great racing tyres, although that may come with a slight compromise when it comes to long-term durability, which is inevitable in a tyre with these superb ride qualities. This is a similar case with the £75 Schwalbe G-One RS which Matt Page tested a few months back. It is similarly priced and equally matched in terms of performance but lacks the plush ride feel.
The £49.99 Panaracer Gravel King SK might look like a bargain-value option. It's arguably more practical as an everyday hardpack fast roller, but naturally, you will not get the same level of performance and unique ride quality.
These Challenge Getaway gravel tyres are worth the high price – if you can afford it and demand what must rank as one of the best hardpack tyres and the most comfortable riding 40mm tyre out there.
