Review: Merida Mission Gravel Race Bike Chooses Affordable Speed Over Huge Tires!

Merida just launched an all-new Mission gravel race bike that looks a lot more like their road racing lineup than it does most adventure-focused gravel bikes these days. That essentially boils down to the fact that their bikepacking-ready Silex had already won a gravel world championship. So, Merida didn’t need another all-rounder. They didn’t even need a fat tire gravel race bike. What they wanted was a UCI Gravel World Series-tuned race bike that felt as fast as a road bike, no matter what surface you were racing on – paved or not.

At first glance, the Mission seems to ignore the contemporary industry pressure that bigger tires are better. But ride this bike, and the virtue of a fast, race-tuned bike becomes immediately clear.t

2025 Merida Mission prioritizes race speed over rough gravel

The new Merida Mission is a perfect reminder that gravel bikes have begun to be increasingly segmented – even if versatility seems to be a gravel through line. So after Sea Otter Europe, I headed outside of Girona to hit some familiar gravel roads on the new bike to see where it sits.

All-road/light gravel bikes exist at one end of the endurance road-evolved spectrum, often lacking real off-road capabilities. Versatile everyday gravel bikes fell into the middle with more comfort & stability. Then ultra-long, slack adventure gravel bikes emerged on the other mountain bike side of the category, ready to haul lots of gear over longer distances and rougher terrain.

Gravel racing bikes have tended to exist in that middle ground. But as many racers have moved from 40mm to 45mm to even 50 & 55mm tires in recent seasons to deal with ultra-distance races and tire-shredding racecourses, the lines have become increasingly blurred.

Since their Silex has already shown itself capable of handling fat tires and racing, for their new gravel race bike, Merida decided to double down on speed and a familiar road racing speed. So, they leaned more heavily to their road racing Scultura, skipping over its endurance road sibling. The resulting Merida Mission gets similar simple aero road bike shaping, responsive handling, a low frame Stack height to make roadies happy, and just enough tire clearance to ride any type of paved or unpaved roads.

Is 40mm tire clearance enough for gravel today?

On paper, sticking with 40mm tire clearance seemed short-sighted. In reality, it’s a bit more complex. That’s partly because Merida is pretty conservative in stating that max tire width. For them, that’s the pretty standard minimum 6mm of clearance between the tire and any part of the frame. But since Merida specs the two top builds with these ultra-wide 32mm internal Zipp 303 Xplr wheels, that means you have a lot more room than the max tire width suggests – especially if you buy one of the more affordable complete bikes.

Merida’s own R&D team are riding 45mm Schwalbe tires on 24mm internal DT wheels. And their Bahrain Victorious sponsored riders are racing 45mm Continental tires on 21-23mm internal Vision wheels. Both of which looked to offer plenty of clearance, even after we did plenty of wet and muddy gravel testing.

Just like 2023 UCI Gravel World Champ (and 2025 3rd place finisher) Matej Mohorič told me, “Officially it’s 40mm, but most customers will put 45mm tires” on their new Mission to suit their own terrain.

Riding the Mission: What really makes this bike work?

So was the choice to stick with a maximum 40mm tire clearance limiting? The answer is a bit of yes and no.

Of course, limiting max tire size is always going to limit where you’ll ride the bike. But for its gravel race intentions, 40mm (with actual 45mm real-world clearance) is enough to be able to ride any terrain you are trying to truly cover at racing speeds. Plus, unsurprisingly, Merida did a good job with the carbon layup to make a lightweight bike that is plenty stiff from the headtube, though the downtube, BB & chainstays into the UDH dropout while staying forgiving up top.

Tire size is just one aspect, though. What really makes this bike work is Merida’s ability to fit those adequately large gravel tires into a lightweight, stiff & responsive carbon frame that has geometry and fit more akin to a road race bike than to a do-it-all gravel bike.

A big part of that is the still surprisingly short 419mm chainstays. They are 11mm shorter than Merida’s do-it-all gravel bike, but only 1mm longer their endurance all-road bike that maxes out at 35mm tires, and just 11mm longer than the dedicated Merida road race bikes.

Road-inspired fit

The road-like fit though, makes one of the biggest differences.

The medium Mission that I tested has a frame Stack height of 569mm. That’s a full 38mm lower than the gravel Silex, 15mm lower than the all-road Scultura Endurance, and only 12mm higher than the World Tour road racing Scultura. Its 391mm Reach is also 4mm shorter than the Scultura, 7mm longer than the Scultura Endurance, and 21mm shorter than the Silex – so again closer to that classic road fit on the bike, since they all get very similar seat angles.

If you are looking for an aggressive road racing ‘slam your stem’ position on the bike, this is the gravel bike for you.

Road-inspired geometry, too

Once you’ve got your bars in a roadie-familiar position, more racing-ready road geometry really ties it all together.

The 72° headtube is a full 2.5° steeper than the Silex. But still 1-1.5° slacker than the Scultura Endurance & Scultura, the Mission is still plenty stable off-road and through loose gravelly corners.

But the biggest difference between the Mission & Silex adds up when you look at overall wheelbase length. At 1013mm for my Medium test bike, that’s 69mm shorter than the Silex. That’s much bigger than the 12mm between the Mission and the slightly shorter all-road Scultura Endurance, or even the 23mm shorter wheelbase of the road racing Scultura.

In the end, Merida really squeezed those 40-45mm tires in tight to create a much more responsive gravel bike that offers a road race feel without sacrificing too much of its all-terrain capability.

Actual weights from 7.72-10kg

Light weights don’t hurt either, especially when the bike doesn’t break the bank. The mid-range Silex 7000 & 700 that I tested a couple years back, each weighed more than 10kg. Now, even the entry-level ~2700€ Mission 4000 is that light.

And the top-tier Mission 10K that I spent the most time riding weighed just 7.72kg in a size M without pedals. That bike isn’t cheap. But at ~8400€ with a full SRAM Red Xplr AXS groupset, a power meter crankset, 1-piece carbon cockpit, and ultra-wide Zipp 303 Xplr SW carbon wheels – it actually looks like a pretty killer deal. Maybe almost 20% cheaper than the similarly spec’d Silex when it debuted in 2023.

Final Thoughts

That combination of road-inspired fit & geo resulted in one of the quickest-accelerating bikes I have ever thrown a leg over. Whenever I’m on a dropbar group ride, I’ve become pretty accustomed to chasing after much fitter, faster riders. And I can’t remember riding a bike that so quickly and efficiently turned my short burst of sprinting power into forward motion to close gaps.

At the end of my second big day riding this bike (with several new PRs on Strava), my parting thought was that this bike was dangerous. Not dangerous in the sense that it was incapable or unstable. But instead, this is a bike that egged me on to go faster. Even when the other cyclists were riding the same bike, the Mission encouraged me to ride faster than I normally would ride. And when I felt like I was at my limit while sitting and pushing the pedals as hard as I could, a quick burst of out-of-the-saddle effort was able to get me back into the slipstream of the rider ahead of me.

In the end, Merida created a lightning-fast gravel bike, perfect for someone coming from the road side of things. It feels so fast that could mount some fat slicks onto it and have a killer all-road bike. Or stick some proper 40-45mm gravel tires to suit your local riding, and set some new gravel road Personal Records.

Read about the full tech details on the bike here, including models, pricing & availability.

Merida-bikes.com