If you're anything like us, you secretly bask in the enjoyment gleaned from dropping the hammer on your buddies. That's why you should make it a little bit easier on yourself with the Continental Race King Race Sport 29-inch Tire. Utilizing the blindingly fast Race King tread pattern, and a super light Race Sport folding case, this is the lightest, and accordingly, the fastest, 29-inch Race King tire around. Your riding buddies won't know what hit 'em.
Part of the secret of the Race King's success lies in its remarkable tread. The rolled shoulder profile and diamond-head arrow center tread pattern is primarily designed for superb power transfer, while also maintaining a very low profile. And as a result, it rolls exceptionally fast. Continental also incorporated transitional knobs from the center to the shoulder of the tire. This way, when you're making quick weight transfers, from cornering to straight-ahead power and back again, the tire remains stable and secure beneath you. The shoulder knobs are low-profile, like the rest of the tread, and along the outer-edge, the pattern is doubled with a ramped leading edge followed by a block tread. Meanwhile, the ramps roll quickly, while the block bites into the dirt for increased traction.
Continental provides its tires in a staggering variety of options, so you'd be forgiven for wanting some clarification into what makes the Race Sport version different from the others in the lineup. Race Sport denotes Continental's folding casing, non-tubeless variant. And while it sacrifices the reinforced sidewall and UST optimized bead hooks, it also sheds roughly 100g over the tubeless ready ProTection version. In other words, this makes this the lightest 29-inch option in the Race King lineup. And when you're ready to leave it all on the trail, this is the tire you want connecting you to the ground.
For the construction of the compound, Continental heavily relied on its proprietary Black Chili rubber compound to help the tire be all things to all conditions. It has succeeded in making the tires grippier, tougher and lighter on their treads. Essentially, the Continental engineers in Germany refined their synthetic rubbers with nano-sized carbon particles to create a compound that reacts to surface objects more quickly, improving grip. These particles also form a tighter bond to improve compound strength, lengthening tread life and reducing the chances that lugs will rip and tear. Compared to Continental's earlier-generation tire compound, Black Chili tires offer 20% less rolling resistance and 30% more grip, yet also manage to improve tread life by 5%.
The Continental Race King Race Sport 29-inch Tire is available in the color Black/black and in a 2.2-inch width.
