The Nevegal is named after a now-defunct Italian UCI World Cup downhill venue in northern Italy. The course there involved everything from grassy meadows to rocky, rooty, dank forests. The original tyres were aimed at being a good all-round tyre for this multitude of unpredictable terrains. The new X-Pro version features a tweaked, shallower tread and a claimed 10% reduction in weight.
The 2.35in tyres feature a directional tread, with central knobs chamfered for quick rolling, and made of a harder compound than the softer shoulders. Sipes (cuts in the tread blocks) allow them to deform under cornering and braking to add traction. Solid shoulder knobs are angled to dig in on cornering and are aided by hollow side knobs that add support in corners. The whole tyre has a much more rounded shape than the previous version and the tread extends quite far down the sidewalls. This should allow extreme lean angles, but also has the benefit of keeping a knobbly profile to the tyre if you’re running it on the new generation of wide and super-wide rims (which I was).
The tyre presents a cheerfully round profile on a wide rim, with lots of tread on offer at all angles. There was more trail and road buzz than I was expecting from the chamfered tread, but this did translate to increased grip off road. I ran them tubeless, but after a couple of pinch-flats (on wide, hookless rims) I stuck tubes back in as I found the sidewalls too thin to inspire confidence. Traction was great, though the tyres do love to slide (albeit predictably) a little too much for my tastes.
Overall: Big, knobby, all-round tyres, if a little fragile of sidewall. Better on the back wheel than the front.
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