Continental Race King Supersonic 2.0 Tire Review
If my former race career taught me anything it was that "tires matter". So when I started having a little trouble with the handling of my Faze, the first thing I looked at was tires.
The bike came with Kenda Smallblock 8s, but I immediately swapped on the Michelin WildGripper Comp S tires from my hardtail. These tires were state of the art race tires from a few years ago and had worked very well on that bike. But the full-suspension Faze was a much faster bike, and the Wildgripper was having trouble keeping up, especially during braking, where the rear wheel would lock very easily.
Familiar with how much of a difference tires can make to the handling of a car, I went looking for a more modern race tire. I settled on the Continental Race King Supersonic 2.0.
The key to this tire is the "Supersonic" in the model name. This designates that the tire is made from Continental's "Black Chilli" compound, which is a soft and sticky compound similar to the compounds in a Hoosier autocross tire. This allows the tire to run smaller knobs (for fast rolling) but still stick. It also designates that the tire has minimal supporting or protective layers in the carcass in order to minimize weight.
The profile of the tire is very "round" (as opposed to "square"). Knob height is consistent across the surface of the tread; it doesn't use larger "cornering knobs" on the shoulders as a way of increasing grip at large lean angles - I suspect to keep the weight of the tire down.
My first impression of this tire was that it rolls very, very fast. On reasonably smooth singletrack, it felt almost like a road tire, and on the road, it doesn't buzz or vibrate and there is no sensation of drag like there is with a chunky tire like a Nevregal. It is also very, very good under braking, sticking in places where the Michelin would skid.
Cornering, at first, felt very sketchy and I had a couple of occasions where the front end slid out on me. After some experimentation, I discovered that the secret to this tire is to load it up - the harder you load it, the better it sticks. This meant, paradoxically, that often carrying more speed into a corner and loading the tire harder would stick, where trying to roll through more slowly would slide and slither. This is a tire that needs to be pushed hard to work, and it really rewards committing to the corner. Once I figured that out and started getting more aggressive with the cornering, grip began to feel nearly limitless. The tire continually surprised me with how hard it could be pushed and still grip.
Experiments with tire pressure indicated that they can be run in the low 30s to high 20s, and the sweet spot appears to be around 29 PSI. Any lower than about 25 PSI and they start to get squirmy and weird. (running tubes at least)
The tire has a few weaknesses though:
The first is that the carcass is so thin (it feels almost like paper) that it has no resistance to punctures whatsoever. Glass and rock haven't bothered the tire at all, but thorns penetrate effortlessly. Happily, there are few thorns where I ride and flats have been few, but encounter anything thorny and the tire will flat.
Secondly, the shallow knobs mean that the tire has next to no grip in mud, and it doesn't take much mud at all to turn the tire into a slithery mess. Any wet section on the trail must be encountered with a large degree of caution, because any load on the tire when it hits the mud means the tire will instantly let go. Wet rocks and roots seem OK (as much as wet rocks and roots ever are) but a quarter-inch of mud and these tires are done.
Finally, this being a race tire (and soft) I expect it to wear fairly quickly.
Happily, I'm quite content with the tradeoffs involved. I rarely encounter mud or thorns, and mountain bike tires are cheap compared to car race tires (and they last longer than a single weekend too!)
Overall, these are the fastest and grippiest tires I have ever encountered, and they are nice and light too. Very highly recommended.
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