Lauf Seigla review

The latest bike from Icelandic gravel brand Lauf is the Seigla, an evolution of its popular True Grit race bike, featuring increased tyre clearance and improved frame compliance.

Up to 10mm of rear displacement of the saddle is paired with 30mm of travel from Lauf’s Grit SL fork, while tyres up to 29×2.25in can be fitted.

Lauf Seigla frame details

The thin but deep plate leaves the bottom bracket area, giving room for wider tyres. Much like the True Grit, the front two thirds of the frame are constructed as a single-piece monocoque, with the one-piece front triangle extending a few inches into the chainstays.

The chainstays originate from a shallow, but broad carbon plate, aiding strength and stiffness in the bottom bracket area, while also shaving off a few millimetres of depth to help squeeze wider tyres into the short rear stays. From there, they narrow to svelte carbon tubes, with the driveside receiving rubberised chainslap protection.

Similarly, Lauf has used a BSA73 bottom bracket, wider than the usual BSA68 BB standard commonly found on road and gravel bikes, in order to gain an extra five millimetres of clearance.

The seatstays are dropped lower down the seat tube. This, paired with a slacker seat tube that originates in front of the BB, helps give the bike its compliance, with the seat tube bowing inwards when a bump is transmitted through the bike.

Lauf uses a standard carbon weave for the entire frame, having decided not to use a lighter high-modulus carbon, which it believes may not be as durable to rock strikes.

The frame features four sets of bosses, using a 4mm Allen bolt. Two live inside the main triangle, while there’s a further one on the underside of the down tube, and another sat on top of the top tube, towards the head tube, located to hold a top-tube feed bag, or bento box.

The front end of the bike houses internal cable routing, with sleeved routing all the way to the chainstays. The rear hose pops out here, and if you want to run a mechanical or wired Di2 groupset, the chainstay protector doubles as outer routing.

The frame is 1x specific, with no option to fit a front derailleur. There’s no routing option for a cable-operated dropper post, though a SRAM XPLR AXS Reverb could be installed, if you’re running one of the stock SRAM XPLR groupsets on the bike. Lauf can give mechanics details on how to modify a frame to take internal routing. Do check with Lauf before going ahead, though, as it may impact on your warranty.

Lauf Seigla specification

Three spec levels of the bike exist from stock, and I’ve tested the Weekend Warrior model, though with a carbon wheel upgrade from e*thirteen.

Lauf will offer the Seigla with a rigid fork option, however my test bike came with its unique leaf-sprung 30mm-travel Grit SL fork.

12 glass-fibre springs join a pair of dog-leg links to the forks legs, giving 30mm of travel, limited by rubber bumpers on the legs to prevent damage when the full extent of the travel is reached.

The fork has been updated slightly for the Seigla. It now uses the more common 12x100mm axle (previous iterations use 15x100mm), and the shoulders are broader to accommodate the wider tyres.

The cockpit features a short 70mm stem from FSA, which holds Lauf’s Smoothie bar. This carbon drop bar has glass fibres running through the tops, which Lauf says provide vibration damping.

The top of the bar has 3 degrees of backsweep, and then a tight radius to the hood extensions. The drops are shallow at 125mm and there’s 16 degrees of flare.

SRAM’s Rival AXS drivetrain features a wireless connection from shifter to derailleur. It comes with a 10-44t cassette. The brand’s brakes feature, too, with the Rival calipers clamping onto 160mm rotors.

The e*thirteen XCX Gravel wheels have an internal width of 24mm. At the time of going to press, 40c Maxxis Rambler tyres will be fitted, though I believe these will change to 45c rubber down the line.

I tested the bike with both Maxxis 700 x 50c Rambler and 29×2.20in Ikon 3C tyres.

Lauf Seigla geometry

The Seigla has, within a millimetre or two, the same geometry as the True Grit.

While tyre widths have increased, and the bike has a suspension fork, it’s still a race-orientated gravel bike.

Lauf has given the bike super-short 425mm chainstays at the back. This, it says, is to provide reactive, snappy handling.

It’s paired with a relatively long front end, which the brand believes gives the bike additional stability when going fast, and over rough or loose terrain. Stems are shorter than we often see on gravel bikes.

Lauf Seigla first ride impressions

This first ride is based on a couple of rides on the bike’s launch in Iceland. I covered around 140km of gravel, though climbing and descending opportunities were limited due to weather conditions that closed mountain roads.

Setting up the bike was simple. The fork has no adjustment, the cockpit was largely to my liking and my saddle height fell within the bracket for the medium-sized bike I rode (I’m 182cm and chose the medium based on my experience of the True Grit, which shares the same geometry).

I ran the 50c Rambler tyres at around 35psi and the 29×2.20in Ikons at 30psi.

A full review will be written once I’ve spent more time on the bike on familiar routes, and once I’ve had a chance to back-to-back test it against the True Grit and other comparable gravel bikes.

Lauf Seigla climbing performance

The Seigla is a comfortable place to sit and spin. The 72.5-degree effective seat angle leaves your hips in a nice place over the pedals, while the long-ish reach doesn’t feel stretched, thanks to the shorter 70mm stem.

Lauf’s Smoothie bar has a comfortable backsweep on the tops, so my wrists never felt awkward while cruising on the tops. The hoods feel a little further forward than they might be on a less swept-back bar, but they don’t actually sit too far forward from the stem’s face plate.

The frame’s compliance doesn’t seem to give anything away in terms of stiffness. In fact, the bottom-bracket area, with its deep early chainstays, feels stiff under power.

With broad tyres run at lower pressure, grip never posed a problem on my test loop’s climbs. On tarmac, I was surprised by how easily the tyres rolled, especially the Rekon Races.

In my experience, the Grit SL fork has little impact on climbing performance. With my weight a little further back on a climb, the front end rolls normally up and over bumps in the road.

When you get out of the saddle and sprint, there’s a little ‘bob’, where the suspension compresses under shifting body weight. However, it’s relatively benign.

If you really put the power down, pushing and pulling through the bars, there’s a hint of disconnect between bar and tyre contact patch. If you’re used to the pin-sharp feel of a stiff road fork and skinny high-pressure rubber, you may notice it. But otherwise, it’s nothing to write home about.

The SRAM Rival XPLR groupset is excellent. Shifting under power is very good, with the chain shifting between sprockets with minimal fuss. The jumps between sprockets feel natural, and the shifter’s consistent performance, thanks to the use of buttons rather than pulling a cable through an outer, is exemplary.

Coming from a mountain bike background, I feel the 10-44 range of the cassette is good. However, having run a ‘mullet’ setup on other gravel bikes, where a mountain bike cassette and derailleur are mated to the road shifters, giving a 10-50 or 10-52t cassette range, suits me a touch better. Sadly, the XPLR derailleur cannot stretch to this size cassette.

Lauf Seigla, on the flat

The e*thirteen rims are 24mm wide internally. On a mountain bike, I’d expect to run these tyres with a marginally wider rim, however the width of the rim helped keep the central, closely spaced and low-height treads rolling smoothly on the harder surface. Tyre noise was low.

Understandably, compared to the lighter, less-treaded Rambler, the Ikon introduced a little more lag into the bike’s reactivity to snappy pedal inputs, but it didn’t feel sluggish.

On the softer terrain that we encountered, thanks to a gravel surface that was thawing after the winter freeze, the wider tyres offered a touch more float than the Ramblers, digging in a little less to the soft road.

Over rougher gravel sections or washboard road surfaces, the Grit SL fork comes into its own.

With no friction at all, it tunes out high-frequency chatter, boosting comfort levels beyond those often found on a gravel bike. It combines well with the larger tyres and Smoothie bar to create a very comfortable front end.

One of my criticisms of the True Grit was that the compliant front end made the rear end feel harsher.

Lauf’s claims that rear-end compliance has been tripled, along with the high-volume rubber (the True Grit is limited to 45c rubber at the back, but is commonly run with 40c tyres to improve mud clearance), seems to run true.

The rear end, though not as smooth as the front, feels noticeably more comfortable than the True Grit, meaning longer, more efficient efforts over rougher ground are possible.

Lauf Seigla descending performance

I rated the True Grit’s performance down hills, and I’ve no reason to suspect that the Seigla will be worse. However, it’s worth noting that so far I’ve not had a chance to do much in the way of descending on the bike.

I’ve found the geometry that Lauf uses on the True Grit, which is nigh-on identical to the Seigla, to be stable and confident.

Rattle it over rough roads and the bike feels fairly unshakeable. The Grit SL fork takes the sting out of the worst of the bumps and smooths road and gravel buzz effectively.

The fork can’t be compared to a traditional mountain bike telescopic suspension fork on bigger hits. It’s un-damped, doesn’t have a progressive spring rate and has only limited travel. As such, comparisons feel unfair.

I’d like to spend some time on the RockShox Rudy, though, to see how the two forks compare.

I have found it possible to get the fork a little confused on more ‘mountain bike’ descents. Steep and rough sections, where heavy braking is required, can induce some twist and twang to the fork. Under more typical gravel-riding conditions, though, it’s unlikely that this would be noticeable often, nor cause much of an issue in my opinion.

The compliance that helps on washboard surfaces no doubt contributes to excellent descending capabilities too.

With a long front end aiding that higher-speed stability, the additional give at the back, combined with the tyre volume, helps calm the ride. Hit an embedded rock or fail to dodge a pothole, and the bike is less likely to bump you offline. It gives the bike an air of calmness when skimming over rougher sections of road.

Ultimately, if descending speed comes from a combination of grip, handling, braking and comfort, the Seigla should offer it in spades.

Lauf Seigla bottom line

The True Grit garnered many fans, thanks to its stable handling and smooth front end. The criticisms it faced as gravel evolved, such as the limited tyre clearance and highlighting of the rigid rear end, thanks to the smooth front, have been addressed with the Seigla.

Proof, though, will be in more detailed testing on home ground, when the bike arrives with us in the UK. Once it does, we’ll bring you a full review. However, the signs are promising.