Wilier Rave SLR 2022

The Wilier Rave SLR is a high-performance gravel bike that's light, speedy and a real blast over firm and firm-ish tracks and trails. It's not purely a race bike but if you're after something that sits towards that end of the gravel spectrum then have a good look.

Let me sum up what the Wilier Rave SLR is about in a few words so that you can decide if it's the sort of bike that interests you. If you want to go out and tear up the local tracks for two, three, four (or whatever) hours at a time and get home in time for tea, this is a helluva fast and fun bike to do it on. If you're more into the adventure side of things – you want mounts for racks and bags, a relaxed riding position, and you're partial to cruising along and watching the clouds go by – there are more suitable options out there.

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Think of a lightweight road bike that allows you to corner hard, accelerate fast, climb quickly, and get into an efficient riding position for the flat setons... The Rave SLR is the gravel bike equivalent. It'll doubtless see action in many gravel races, including the UCI's Gravel World Series that starts in 2022. It flies across hardpacked gravel and anything similar – firm, earthy forest tracks, well-surfaced towpaths, that kind of thing.

How come? For a start, it's light, our large-sized review bike hitting the road.cc Scales of Truth at 7.73kg. For context, that compares with 9.66kg for the £5,250 Specialized Diverge Expert Carbon (featuring a Future Shock 2.0 system to smooth the ride) that we reviewed back in the summer.

We don't get over-excited about low weight but, all other things being equal, it can be handy, especially when it comes to accelerating and climbing – and the Rave SLR does both of those things beautifully. It's very pingable too – you can easily chuck it around through the tight stuff.

The aggressive riding position really assists when you want to jack up the speed too. I'll go into the geometry in more detail later but the Rave SLR – which is available in an all-road build as well as this gravel build – is designed for efficiency. Although the position on offer isn't as low/stretched as that of a performance-minded road bike, you'll have no problem getting tucked down out of the wind.

While we're talking about such things, we've no way of testing Wilier's aero claims but the company says that the profiles of the head tube, down tube and seat tube reduce drag. For what it's worth, the Rave SLR is said to sit somewhere behind Wilier's Filante road bike in terms of aero efficiency, but with 5 per cent less drag than the Zero SLR.

When it comes to the more technical stuff, the Rave SLR is nicely balanced and the flared J-Bar handlebar provides a decent amount of stability. The ends measure 49cm (centre to centre) which isn't anywhere near as wide as some of the super-flared drop bars out there these days but feels about right on a bike that also has a need for speed. Any wider and you might feel compromised on the fast sections.

The one factor – and it could be an important one – that might hold you back over some surfaces is the maximum tyre width of 42mm on 700C wheels. That's tyres measuring 42mm across rather than ones that are nominally 700 x 42.

Our review bike came fitted with tubeless-ready Vittoria Terreno Dry tyres in a 700 x 38mm size. Believe it or not, they measured 42mm wide on the Miche Graff Carbon wheels, leaving just 6mm of clearance with the seatstays and seatstay bridge. That's not much when you're riding off-road and all kinds of debris can stick to your tyres. After six weeks of solid testing, there was never any damage to the carbon, but I'd still be more comfortable with greater clearance.

Vittoria describes these tyres as 'bridging the gap between file treads and traditional all-conditions treads'. Want anything knobblier and you'll need an even narrower nominal size. If you're likely to head onto muddier stuff – bridleways, byways, and even sections on some gravel loops during wet spells – you might feel you need the option of fitting something wider than 42mm.

Wilier says that the Rave SLR uses the same technology as its high-end Filante SLR and Zero SLR road bikes – the carbon mixed with viscoelastic fibres such as liquid crystal polymers – and identical construction techniques.

This, it says, allows it to produce a frame that weighs just 950g +/- 5% (size medium) and a fork that's 415g +/- 5%. Wilier gives a complete bike weight of 8kg +/-5% and, as mentioned, our review bike came in at 7.73kg – towards the lower end of that band.

Geometry

In terms of the geometry, Wilier says that it started with its top-line road race geometries and went from there, taking into account frame dimensions from its NDR endurance road bike and existing Jena gravel bike.

If you're buying a Rave SLR, you can use Wilier's Acu-Fit Table to make sure the riding position on your new bike matches that of an existing bike (or the measurements you've been given by a bike fit). You measure the handlebar position relative to the bottom bracket on your current bike and find the relevant bar/stem size and headset spacer height to get the same position on your shiny new Rave SLR.

I was riding the size large with a 56.1cm top tube (in an ideal world, I ride a bike with a 57.0cm top tube but the options here are 56.1cm and 57.9cm, so I was slap-bang between sizes), a 52cm seat tube (centre of BB to top of seat tube), and a short (for a gravel bike) 15.4cm head tube.

The seat tube angle is 73.5 degrees and the head tube angle is 71 degrees – much slacker than you'll find on an equivalent road bike. The stack on this model is 570mm and the reach is 391mm. That reach figure is exactly the same as you'll find on the large version of Wilier's Filante road bike, although the Filante's stack is 15mm lower.

The other thing to take into account is that the stem section of the Rave SLR's combined bar/stem has a 14-degree rise, making your riding position a little higher. It's still a fairly aggressive setup, though, with a focus on speed.

Fixtures and fittings

The frame comes with water bottle mounts on the down tube and seat tube and that's yer lot... No rack mounts, no top tube bag mounts, no mudguard mounts, no nuffink. You could strap on frame bags, of course, but the Rave SLR isn't particularly interested in versatility. A lot of other speed-minded gravel bikes come with top tube bag mounts, though, and some people will be disappointed by their absence here.

There are no gear cables on our review bike because it's equipped with a wireless SRAM Force eTap AXS groupset, but if there were any they'd run internally, like the brake hoses. It really is a neat-looking bike in that respect. The brake hoses immediately duck inside Wilier's J-Bar, run through the stem sections, and then head down into the frame.

The J-Bar, originally designed for the Jena, is a cool piece of kit. It's an integrated carbon monocoque bar with a two-part V-shaped stem and a claimed weight of 390g +/- 5% (430mm width x 95mm stem section).

I was using the 450 x 111mm model with a 128mm drop and a 78mm reach. As mentioned, I found the 49cm end-to-end width a good compromise between speed and efficiency. Although shaped for aerodynamics, the squashed top sections also provide a superbly ergonomic handhold for climbing.

Way back up there somewhere I said that Wilier offers the Rave SLR in all-road as well as gravel builds. As you'd expect, the all-road bikes come with road groupsets (Shimano Dura-Ace Di2, Shimano Ultegra Di2 and SRAM Force AXS as opposed to Campagnolo Ekar, Shimano GRX and SRAM Force AXS XPLR on the gravel bikes) and narrower (32mm) tyres. The handlebar is different too, the all-road bikes coming with Wilier's road-specific Zero Bar which has a -6° rise (I know, strange wording; you can think of it as a 6° drop). This makes a significant difference to the riding position.

The Rave SLR is a bit of a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde affair, then, so is it the answer to all your N+1 woes? Well, swapping personas isn't particularly easy. If you wanted to change the handlebar you'd need to take off the controls and re-do the brake hoses, any cables, and the bar tape... and that's without even thinking about changes to the gearing. It's the sort of thing that would make sense if you wanted to make a permanent change to the bike's character, but you wouldn't want to switch back and forth regularly.

Wheels and tyres

As with any gravel bike, you could have a couple of sets of wheels fitted with different tyres that you could swap depending on the surface you wanted to ride. Speaking of the wheels, the Miche Graff Carbons fitted here have performed really well. The hookless rims are 33mm deep with an internal width of 22mm, providing plenty of stability for the 700 x 38mm tyres. With a total weight of 1,445g, they're pretty lively and after six weeks of almost daily use – the vast majority of it on gravel – they're as round and true as they were out of the box.

They're held in place using Mavic's Speed Release thru-axle system so you don't need to remove the axle fully from the hub to take the wheel off your bike. This makes things a little quicker and, just as important for most of us, means you'll never find yourself scrabbling around to find the axle following a repair.

Getting the tyres right is tricky on a gravel bike because surfaces vary massively between different parts of the world and different times of the year. The Vittoria Terreno Dry tyres fitted are great if you are on gravel, the low-profile centre pattern rolling fast and the taller shoulder tread gripping firmly through the bends.

However, we all know that no gravel bike spends its life exclusively on gravel, particularly in the UK where, let's face it, we're big on mud, so you might want to swap them out, depending on what you're riding. Don't forget, though, that the widest you can go is a measured 42mm, and that might be a limitation for some.

Groupset

The SRAM Force XPLR eTap AXS groupset on our review bike offered a 40T 1x chainset and a 10-44T cassette. Most of the tech is similar to that of the SRAM Force eTap AXS Stu reviewed, although the cassette is wider-ranging and the rear derailleur has a longer knuckle at the top where it attaches to the hanger. The top pulley wheel is offset to the main pivot so that as you move through the gears the pulley wheel moves either closer or further from the cassette.

The conclusion is the same, though: it's excellent, the Orbit fluid damper's ability to stabilise the chain over rough roads being a particular highlight.

Then there's the price...

Value

The Wilier Rave SLR comes in as the most expensive gravel bike we've ever reviewed on road.cc, taking over from the £8,500 Specialized S-Works Diverge. We reviewed that bike a few years ago, though. It's now £10,850 equipped with SRAM's top-end Red components.

Specialized's SRAM Force-equipped Diverge Pro Carbon is £7,250, coming with the brand's Future Shock 2.0 suspension system which does a great job of damping handlebar vibration.

> 19 of the best 2021 gravel bikes & adventure road bikes

The Cannondale Topstone Carbon Lefty 1 that we reviewed last year is now £7,500. It's equipped with a mix of SRAM Force and Eagle groupset components although, coming with both front and rear suspension, it is considerably heavier than the Wilier Rave SLR, our review bike weighing 9.92kg.

Trek's Checkpoint SLR 7 eTap is priced at £7,900, the eTap in question being Force XPLR eTap AXS, the same as you'll find on the Wilier Rave SLR. Granted, the Wilier is lighter than any of the other bikes mentioned here, but you'd still have to say that it offers less impressive value for money.

Conclusion

If you're after a super-versatile gravel bike, the Wilier Rave SLR really isn't it. On the other hand, if your focus is firmly on performance, you're going to spend most of your time on firm rather than gloopy tracks and trails, and you have a lot of money at your disposal, this bike will reward you with plenty of speed.

Verdict

Light and responsive gravel bike for those with a single-minded focus on speed