Aero for 50mm Tires: Hunt’s Unreleased Ultra-Wide Gravel Wheels

Welcome to Velo’s MADE bike show coverage, where we share our favorite things we’ve found at the 2026 show. If we think it’s cool, you’ll see it. See the rest of our coverage here.

Walking around the 2026 MADE bike show, I found an unreleased Hunt gravel wheel on the Schon Studios breakaway frame I covered when it was unfinished at last year’s MADE show. This time the bike is back, but it’s finished and sporting a variation of the Hunt 5AM Limitless wheel that got seriously wide.

Because these are unreleased, there’s not a ton of info yet, but the concept is one that a few of the more progressive brands in the space have been looking to solve this year. As tires get bigger, that impacts aerodynamics. Hunt is now entering the ring with a reverse mullet design that offers a 27mm internal width plus an external width greater than 40mm for the front.

What that extra width does is smooth out the airflow as it transitions from a high-volume tire to the carbon rim. By preventing the tire from ballooning wider than the rim—which creates a lightbulb shape and stalls the air—Hunt is able to maintain an aerodynamic advantage even with bigger modern tires. The brand optimized this final profile specifically for 45mm and 50mm tire setups, effectively scaling up the design philosophy from its Limitless road line for the dirt.

Aerodynamics are only half the story here. As you expand the width of a wheel both internally and externally, it stands the tire sidewalls up more vertically. This helps the aerodynamics, but it also becomes a liability by leaving the rim more susceptible to rock strikes. To counter this, Hunt is using a 9mm-wide bead edge. The extra material makes the rim more durable if it does strike a rock.

Of course, with every push there is a pull. You’d expect a wheel this beefy to suffer a weight penalty, but Hunt told me the wheelset is expected to be close to 1300 grams in final production guise.

While the official launch is still a few weeks out, these wheels are far past the prototype phase. Hunt athletes have spent the last few months secretly racing them at the sharp end of the Life Time Grand Prix. For more information, when it’s available, visit the Hunt website.