Extracting the best performance out of tyres has always been something of a dark art within pro cycling.
In years gone by, team mechanics would reportedly age the team’s tubular tyres in cellars, but at least (almost) everyone used the same tech.
These days, mechanics at the Tour de France have to manage the varying choices (and restraints) of individual riders, team performance directors and sponsors.
Tubeless tyres of differing sizes and tubeless sealant, clincher tyres and latex or TPU inner tubes, or tubular tyres and rim cement. Things aren’t as simple as they once were.
At the Grand Départ of this year’s race, we toured the team hotels with our notebooks and vernier calipers in hand, dissecting the wheel and tyre setups of some of the biggest names in the sport.
While wider tubeless tyres continue to gain traction within the pro peloton on the macro level, almost every team was doing something slightly different with its own mix of equipment and performance philosophies.
Let’s take a look at what we learned.
Wide tyres on wide rims
Coming into this year’s race, my expectation was that most teams would be running 28c tubeless tyres.
Yet while we did see a number of such setups, it wasn’t universal.
It also appears that the wheels each team has access to is having a large influence on tyre choice and tyre size.
Tadej Pogačar’s super-sized time trial tyres
It’s not so long ago that 25c tyres were considered ‘wide’ for pro racing, but Tadej Pogačar’s Colnago V4Rs is a clear sign that things have changed significantly in recent years.
As first revealed in our recent 2023 Tour tech trends article, his bike was shod with 28c Continental GP5000 TT TR tyres (the lighter and faster time trial-specific version, rather than standard GP5000 S TR) on ENVE SES 4.5 wheels.
That isn’t out of the ordinary on paper, but his tyres actually measured an enormous 31.3mm and 32.2mm-wide, front and rear.
The reason behind this is the super-wide internal rim width of the ENVE rims. At 25mm, these rims have some of the widest internal widths of any road bike wheelset available today.
In fact, it’s firmly in territory we’d associate with gravel bike wheels.
According to ENVE, this offers riders a wider effective tyre, which can be run at lower tyre pressures, theoretically reducing rolling resistance and improving comfort and grip.
Crucially, this is claimed to be achieved without an associated aerodynamic penalty, as the rim – at 32mm wide externally – is optimised for this.
As we speculated at the time, Pogačar has indeed changed at least his wheelset setup depending on the stage parcours.
For stage nine’s mountain top finish on the Puy de Dôme, Pogačar switched to ENVE’s ultralight SES 2.3 climbing wheelset. At a claimed weight of 1,197g, this switch saves a claimed 255g compared to the deeper and wider SES 4.5 rims.
Pogačar was still using the GP5000 TT TR tyres, although we’re not sure whether he changed widths to suit the narrower dimensions of the SES 2.3 rims (these measure 25mm externally and are aerodynamically optimised for a 27c tyre, according to ENVE), and help save every last gram.
Fat tyres for a climbing bike
While some riders at this year's Tour appear to have been running narrower tyres to help get their bike weight down (we’ll reveal who later), not every team needs to adopt this tactic.
Israel-Premier Tech’s new Factor 02 VAM, for example, is light enough that Simon Clarke was still able to run wider, heavier tyres on it and still graze the UCI’s minimum weight limit of 6.8kg.
Clarke’s bike was equipped with (non-sponsor correct) 28c Continental GP5000 S TR tyres, which measured 30.6mm-wide on Black Inc's new 28||34 climbing wheels.
On our scales, Clarke’s bike weighed a feathery 6.925kg – with pedals and a bottle cage – making it the lightest bike we saw at this year’s Grand Départ.
Ineos-Grenadiers still on the hunt for marginal gains
When we saw Egan Bernal’s Pinarello Dogma F on the eve of the first stage, it was equipped with Continental GP5000 S TR tyres on Shimano Dura-Ace C50 wheels.
Again, so far, so normal.
A quick check with the vernier calipers revealed a potential marginal gain typically employed by the British squad, however.
Up front, Bernal had a narrower 25c tyre, measuring 27mm-wide, paired with a wider 28c tyre, measuring 29.8mm, out back.
Given the Shimano wheels have a relatively conservative design (especially in contrast to Pogačar’s ENVE’s), I believe this combination was designed to optimise for aerodynamic efficiency on the leading edge of the bike and rolling resistance and comfort at the rear.
The Dura-Ace C50 rim has an external rim width of 28mm, and an internal rim width of 21mm.
Given the 28c tyre on the rear wheel measured 29.8mm-wide, running this combination on the front would likely compromise the aerodynamic efficiency of the wheel and tyre system.
This is because, as a rule of thumb, the rim should generally be slightly wider than the tyre for optimal aerodynamic performance (as when the tyre is wider than the rim, it’s more difficult for the rim to recapture and smooth the airflow).
At the rear of the bike, where the airflow is understandably much messier, aerodynamic performance matters less. Given this, Ineos perhaps feels the potential rolling resistance benefits of a wider tyre are worth more than any increase in drag here.
Notably, Lotto-Dstny’s sprinter, Caleb Ewan, had a similar setup on his prototype Ridley.
His bike was set up with a pair of DT Swiss wheels ARC 1100 50 DB wheels (which have a 20mm internal width and a 27mm external width), with a 26c Vittoria Corsa Pro TLR tyre up front and a 28c version at the rear.
Ewan’s front tyre measured 26.5mm-wide, which is likely a good aerodynamic match for this rim.
Some ‘normal’ setups
Not everyone had an unusual or non-standard setup, however. 28c tyres front and rear was, as suspected, a popular choice.
Standard tyres on custom bikes
Mathieu van der Poel’s custom Canyon Aeroad CFR (or perhaps we should say ‘one of his custom Aeroads…’, given the Dutchman has ridden three different custom bikes at this year’s Tour already) was equipped with 28c Vittoria Corsa Pro TLR tyres both front and rear, on Shimano Dura-Ace C50 wheels.
According to our calipers, these measured 29.3mm-wide – slightly wider than the 28mm external rim width of the wheelset.
EF Education-EasyPost’s Ecuadorian climber, Richard Carapaz, also had a pair of 28c Vittoria Corsa Pro TLR tyres mounted to Vision Metron 45 SL wheels.
Considering the Vision rims have the same 21mm internal rim width as the Shimano ones, it was no surprise to see these also measured 29.3mm wide.
Unfortunately, the reigning Olympic road race champion crashed out of the race on the opening stage, meaning a full pro bike feature on his custom, gold-accented Cannondale SuperSix Evo Lab71 is unlikely to see the light of day. We’ve included it here as a treat, though.
Astana Qazaqstan’s Mark Cavendish (who also sadly crashed out of the race on stage eight, after coming agonisingly close to a record-breaking 35th stage win the previous day) had a similar tyre setup, albeit on different wheels which appears to have affected the effective width of these tyres.
His custom Wilier Filante SLR was also shod with 28c Vittoria Corsa Pro TLR tyres front and rear.
On his HED Vanquish RC6 Pro wheelset, though, which have a 21mm internal and 30.6mm external rim width, these measured only 27.4mm-wide.
Although this was slated to be the Manxman’s final Tour de France, might we see a true last hurrah (and, hopefully, another custom bike) for the two-time green jersey winner next year instead?
According to L’Equipe, Astana Qazaqstan’s team manager, Alexander Vinokourov, has offered Cavendish a spot on the team for 2024, so our fingers remain crossed.
New Schwalbe tyres for Kristoff?
Fellow sprinter and four-time Tour de France stage winner, Alexander Kirstoff (Uno-X Pro Cycling Team), was also running identically-sized Schwalbe Pro One TLE tyres front and rear on his Dare VRSu.
Labelled as 28c, these measured 27.7mm-wide on Kristoff’s DT Swiss ARC 1100 62 DB wheels.
These rims have the same 20mm internal and 27mm external width as on Ewan’s DT Swiss wheelset. As the name implies, though, the rims are 12mm deeper.
Interestingly, Kristoff’s tyres had a blue bead strip and branding – something which isn’t present on the Schwalbe Pro One TLE tyres currently available.
Could this be a new version of the German brand’s highly-rated tubeless tyre? Sadly, Uno-X team mechanics were tight-lipped on the subject.
We couldn’t help but notice the blue bead and branding was also present on the 165g Schwalbe Pro One Aerothan prototype tubeless tyre we spotted at EuroBike last month, though, suggesting there might be a connection between the two.
Given the rapid progression – and release schedule – of the latest tubeless road tyres, could Schwalbe be preparing to launch something new?
A few narrow tyres on narrow rims
If you’d had asked us before the Tour whether we’d see any tyres narrower than 25mm-wide, our answer would almost certainly have been a firm ‘Non’.
To our surprise, though, we saw a set of 24c tubular tyres (which measured 24.4mm-wide) mounted to a bike belonging to Jumbo-Visma, one of the most technologically progressive teams in the peloton.
And not just anyone’s bike, but one belonging to last year’s yellow jersey winner, Jonas Vingegaard.
Notably, these were mounted to a set of Reserve 34|37 tubular wheels, the team’s climbing wheelset.
Given this combination was mounted to Vingegaard’s Cervélo S5 (the Canadian brand’s aero road bike), we suspect it was intended to help get bike weight as low as possible for the Tour’s hilly opening stages around Bilbao, Spain.
This strategy was successful, too, as Vingegaard’s bike weighed an impressive 7.195kg on our scales – a full kilogram less than the Cervélo S5 Force eTap AXS we reviewed last year.
The Dutch team hasn’t been in full weight-weenie mode for the entire Tour, however.
Instead, Jumbo-Visma riders appear to be switching wheelsets and tyres to suit the varying demands of each stage.
For example, Last year’s green jersey winner, Wout Van Aert, used the super-wide Reserve 52|63 wheelset paired with Vittoria Corsa Speed G2.0 TLR time trial tyres for the flat fourth stage.
With internal and external widths of 25 and 35mm on the front rim, and 24 and 34mm on the rear, a 28c tyre (the smallest tyre size recommended by current ETRTO standards for rims this wide) on these rims is – as on Pogačar’s ENVE rims – likely to measure well over 31mm-wide.
In fact, a set of the 28c Vittoria Corsa TLR G2.0 tyres (the predecessor to the recently launched Corsa Pro TLR) paired to the same wheelset, which featured on the Cervélo S5 test bike mentioned a moment ago, measures 31.7mm wide at just 60PSI/4.1 BAR.
Vingegaard, meanwhile, appears to have been oscillating between the setup mentioned above and the Reserve 40|44 wheelset paired with Vittoria Corsa Pro TLR tyres.
The 40|44 rims have internal and external widths of 25.5 and 33mm on the front, and 25 and 31mm on the rear, so we suspect these would also be paired with 28c tyres.
By choice or by chance?
Over at Cofidis, meanwhile, Alexis Renard’s new Look 795 Blade RS was equipped with 25c Michelin Power Cup tubular tyres (which measured exactly 25mm-wide), mounted on Corima WS Black DX wheels.
As one of the oldest teams in the WorldTour peloton, enjoying a resurgence at this year’s Tour with two stages wins so far, is this simply a case of Cofidis being behind the curve on technological innovations?
After all, most aero-focussed road bike wheelsets have grown steadily wider in recent years, following the same trend for tyres.
As discussed on the BikeRadar Podcast, though, Cofidis may have simply picked this tyre width as that’s what’s optimal for the wheels it has available from its sponsor, Corima.
We did spot spare wheels equipped with wider, tubeless versions of the same Michelin Power Cup tyres on top of a team car, but none of the French brand’s road wheelsets are as progressive (in terms of rim shape) as those from the likes of ENVE, Zipp, Reserve or Hunt.
Considering the WS Black DX wheels have a 26mm external width, a 25mm tyre is likely the optimum choice from an aero perspective.
It’s possible, therefore, that Renard would prefer wider tyres and wheels, but chose (or was given) this setup within the constraints of the equipment that’s available to him.
That said, Renard (and his team) may also be perfectly happy with this combination. Unfortunately, we’ll likely never know.
What about clinchers?
Tubeless wheels and tyres have been ‘taking over’ the pro peloton for a number of years now, replacing the more traditional tubular systems.
A close look at the bunch shows a few teams are opting for clincher setups instead, though.
AG2R-Critoen’s Ben O’Connor, for example, had his prototype BMC aero road bike set up with 28c Pirelli P Zero Race clincher tyres. These measured 30.2mm wide on his Campagnolo Bora Ultra WTO 45 wheels.
Eyeballing the distinctive black valve stem, we also think he had Pirelli’s 35g (claimed weight) P Zero Smartube thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) inner tubes.
As with Vingegaard’s Cervélo S5, we suspect this combination was chosen for its impressively low weight, as O’Connor’s size 58cm bike weighed just 7.335kg on our scales.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Specialized-sponsored teams, meanwhile, continue to use a tyre released almost 10 years ago.
Despite the American brand releasing two new tubeless tyres this year, as well as updated tubeless-ready wheelsets to complement them, both Team TotalEnergies and Soudal Quick-Step seem content to continue with Specialized’s Turbo Cotton clinchers.
Considering the new Roval Rapide CLX II wheelset is around 100g heavier than the previous, clincher-only version, it could again be riders opting for the marginally lower weight of a clincher setup.
Alternatively, with their open tubular design, it might also be that the pro riders prefer the tubular-esque ride quality of the Turbo Cotton tyres.
Or, perhaps because Soudal Quick-Step has had so much success on this setup in recent years – including wins at the 2021 Tour of Flanders with Kasper Asgreen, and the UCI Road World Championships with Julian Alaphilippe in the same year – the Belgian team may simply be choosing to stick with what it knows and likes while it still has a choice.
Whatever the answer, we suspect these teams are pairing those tyres with either latex or TPU inner tubes, both of which offer significantly lower rolling resistance and weight than standard butyl tubes.
