Is it a narrower tire width? Higher tire pressure? Minimal tread pattern? Maybe a combo of the mix? Which do you find to be the best combination? Thanks.

Tire construction, materials, pressure, tread pattern, size, load - and some manufacturers are better than others....... Usually, cheap = poor rolling ........

All of the above. After that you can look into going with a tubeless setup.

I use Continental GP4000 tires on my road bike.

Also, your rims make a big difference. I'd also look into that.

harder pedalling................................

Tread pattern makes absolutely NO difference.

It is there to comfort consumers who think they are riding something heavy enough to actually cause hydroplaning.

Construction/materials matter. Tire pressure relative to construction and materials matters most IMHO.

Cotton.

Well I guess it depends on the question op is asking. No tread pattern vs tread pattern or tread pattern A vs tread pattern B.

Supple sidewalls.

When you sit on your bike you flatten the contact patch with the ground. As you ride, the contact patch is constantly moving around the tire. Try to flatten a section of tire with your finger. The energy that's required to constantly change that flat contact patch has to come from somewhere. That's rolling resistance.

More air pressure reduces the size of the contact patch so it reduces the rolling resistance - to a point. A rock hard tire, however, bounces upward over every pebble on less than perfect roads. That often feels faster but it really isn't. The energy that's required to lift the bike vertically isn't moving you down the road and has to come from somewhere.

A tire that has very supple sidewalls requires less energy to deform at the contact patch and envelopes small road irregularities better so, at an equivlent air pressure, it will roll more easily. The trade-off is likely to be durability. A tire with very thin, supple sidewalls is likely to cut more easily.

Not just the sidewalls but the tread as well as the interaction between the two.

Hmm. Interesting explanation, but I'm not sure if I'm convinced that there is a speed advantage to redirecting energy into deforming the sidewall vs. raising the bike itself - both are losses. And, I doubt the upward force of going over a small pebble is going to be high enough to move the bike upward enough to have a meaningful change in rolling resistance. Additionally, I think the real tradeoff between supple and stiff sidewalls is more about grip during a turn, much in the same way that "sticky" tires handle better but necessarily have a higher rolling resistance.

Feel that road buzz in your hands?

That's energy diverted from your bike moving forward.

Hear the sound it makes?

Even more energy diverted from your bike moving forward.

i'm not sure i notice the difference in rolling

try again

Within a fairly broad range that's what I think too. I don't want super-stiff tires like Armadillos, but I'm not going to buy any super-fragile race tires so that I can go the tinyest bit faster either.

For the kind of riding that I do a 5 minute difference in a 25 or 30 mile ride would not be significant. I used to say that it would take laboratory grade instruments to measure the difference in tire rolling resistances but somebody has since pointed out to me that today, by using a Power Tap, an ordinary guy can actually make such measurements.

No tread pattern has ANY impact so no tread vs tread or pattern vs pattern is irrelevant.

I explained my rationale. Other than an unsupported and dismissive rebuke, what is yours?

I don't think that makes sense. Race cars use slicks because they get better traction on dry surfaces than treaded tires. It might be that the at the moment of a bike tire slipping away that it doesn't matter what the tread pattern is, but the point of having a tread pattern is to avoid (or delay) having the tire give way in the first place.

You're misinformed.

No, just as RetroGrouch correctly explained about the advantage of a supple sidewall, there is a similar benefit to having a tread pattern (or lack thereof) that avoids energy losses due to the rubber squirming in the area of the contact patch.

One example of a poor design was the old Specialized tire of the late '70s that had a solid rubber center in the tread with fairly deep grooves on both sides. As the tire rolled, that solid rubber center part would be pushed out to both sides by the pressure from the road at the contact patch. That repeated deformation of the tread rubber takes energy which then goes into heating up the tire tread instead of propelling the bike. A similar tire but with a smooth (slick) tread area suffers from much less rubber deformation and therefore has less rolling resistance. Knobby tread patterns result in even greater rubber deformation in the contact region and should also be avoided to get lower rolling resistance in applications where the knobs have no offsetting advantage.

Another unsupported rejoinder. Look, I'm open to being wrong and learning in the process, but I'm not open to unsupported assertions. Furthermore, regarding race cars, I'm certainly not wrong that they use slicks, so put up or shut up.

There's enough easily available information on the internet that I don't feel compelled to get drawn into an argument with you. If you're genuinely interested in learning, Sheldon Brown's page on tires is a good place to start.

Brown asserts that hydroplaning on a bike is impossible, but since I have done it and crashed, I assert that he is full of it. He also says that it is very rare for cars to hydroplane, which is probably true, but anyone with a fast rear wheel driven car that has driven in wet conditions knows that it is certainly a very real event. Like I said, make your case. Relying on expert opinions that aren't really expert doesn't add much to the conversation.

You've hydroplaned, or you've slid?

If you were hydroplaning, it wouldn't matter whether the car was front or rear wheel drive. I'm done with this discussion, because you're ignorant and wish to remain that way.

I'm sorry but tread very much has an effect on rolling resistance. A more aggressive tread pattern deflects far more and will offer more resistance from the bits of tread being forced upward as the tire conforms. This irregularity will cause resistance. Granted, with 95% of tires used on a road bike, the tread is relatively flat, but it is naive to assert that tread design has no influence on rolling resistance.

I'm just curious as to Sheldon Brown's source for his expertise. While years of riding gives experience, I hardly believe that makes him an expert in engineering. A lot of what is on that site outdated.

If you want to take the tread pattern argument to an absurd level then yes, a slick tire will have less rolling resistance than a knobby tire.

I think what you are really talking about is construction - by this I mean a the choice as to how thick the tread layer is, whether there are varying thicknesses or whether or not different compounds are used in the construction of various sections of the tire - and casing deflection. I agree that these both play critical roles in the characteristics of a given tire. Much more so than tread pattern.

The point that I am making is that if you look at a similar category of tire (since we are in the 41 lets restrict it to road tires and since I assume we are talking about speed lets limit this to performance oriented tires) you will see minimal tread patterns. Why is this? It is not because tread improves traction in any way. It is there to instill confidence in consumers - to make them feel like the tire will have good traction.

Based on tests done by Continental, bicycle tires - and bicycles in general - do not have the mass or force to hydroplane and that tread pattern had absolutely no effect on traction. Perhaps I misspoke in an earlier post when I said tread vs no tread has no difference. This is not entirely true. The fastest tire is a slick tire because of reduced casing deflection vs a tire with tread. The thing is that this factor is FAR down on the list in terms of what makes a faster tire.

Construction and compounding tops the list. These also affect traction the most. Tread is an after thought and often designed by the marketing department not the engineers. That should tell you something.