Quote:
Originally Posted by andrewsuzuki
First, why? Tread thickness is identical. As for sidewall thickness, the GP is .55mm; the Bon Jon is .6mm. Pretty close. There are faster tires than the GP like the Pro One tubeless that have an even thicker sidewall @ .9mm. What's holding Compass back? Rubber compound?
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Yes, it may very well be the tread compound. The predecessor to the GP4000s was the GP4000, which was dimensionally the same, but used a silica based tread compound. The GP4000 was a bit of a dog when it came to rolling resistance. When Continental replaced the tread compound with a new compound based on nano-sized carbon particles (which they called Black Chili), it had a dramatic reduction in rolling resistance, even lower than other tires with thinner treads made of traditional rubber.
The current lowest rolling resistance tires now all use nano particle carbon compounds, and include tires from Continental (Black Chili compound), Vittoria (Graphene+ compound) and Specialized (Gripton compound -developed by the same engineers that developed Continental's Black Chili).