You still need the legs to win, but tech is never a footnote at Paris-Roubaix. The famous cobbled sectors place enormous strain on equipment, and the wrong setup can end a race before it ever truly begins.
Nowhere is more attention paid than to tyres. An ill-timed puncture could end a hopeful’s race, but with ‘only’ 54.8km of pavé in the 258km men's race, an excessively robust setup will needlessly waste precious watts elsewhere.
After decades of relative stability, tyre tech at Roubaix has shifted dramatically in recent years, with tubeless systems, inserts and – above all – ever-wider tyres the key talking points.
We’re on the ground at the start of this year’s race, casting a hawkish eye over team setups – here are the key tyre tech trends to follow before the big day tomorrow.
1. Pogačar and Movistar go massive
To the best of our knowledge, Tadej Pogačar and Movistar Team are running the widest setup of Paris-Roubaix, with both using 35mm-wide Continental GP 5000 S TR tyres.
In Pogi’s case at least, this measures a whopping 38mm wide once mounted to his ENVE SES 6.7 front wheel. He's stuck to a more 'normal' 32mm tyre for his rear SES 4.5 wheel. Meanwhile, Movistar's Ivan Romeo is running 35mm tyres front and rear.
These are progressive choices, even by modern Paris-Roubaix standards, where tyre widths have been creeping upwards year-on-year.
It's also likely right on the limit of the UCI's rules, which limits any wheel + tyre combo to a maximum diameter of 700mm.
A 40mm-wide tyre typically balloons up beyond this when mounted, so don't expect to see anyone go wider than this.
2. Nobody is on anything smaller than 32mm
While those two are outliers, so far, we haven’t seen anyone riding tyres smaller than 32mm wide – and we don’t expect we will.
That’s a far cry from even a few short years ago, where spotting 28- or 30mm wide tyres at Roubaix was notable – exciting, even.
Even though the cobbled sectors only make up a relatively small proportion of the race, better testing, improved tyre tech and a more open-minded peloton means there’s now little reason not to ride wider tyres at Roubaix. The question is whether riders will follow the lead of the likes of Pogačar, and go further still, en masse.
3. Not everybody is convinced by inserts
Wide tyres might be in vogue, but tubeless tyre inserts remain a divisive topic in the peloton.
Teams using them are nigh-on evangelical about their benefits, while others present a more cautious stance – either unwilling to compromise on perceived, or real, performance losses, or simply unconvinced by their efficacy.
The pro-inserts camp includes both the men’s and women’s Visma-Lease a Bike squads, as is Team Picnic PostNL.
On the other hand, Pogačar’s wheel supplier, ENVE, has said it doesn’t endorse the use of tubeless inserts in its wheels, while an Alpecin-Premier Tech spokesperson told us the team didn’t want to take on the performance penalty.
As they're hidden inside tyres, a comprehensive survey of every team’s approach is near-impossible, but even from what we can see, there isn’t a clear-cut case for inserts in the eyes of the pros just yet.
4. Gravaa is out, but there’s still weird stuff out there
The shock news that the UCI had banned the Gravaa pressure-adjust system just weeks before Roubaix due to uncertainty around its commercial availability removed one of the more entertaining tech highlights from recent editions of the race.
The system enabled riders to adjust tyre pressure on the fly, and was ridden to victory by Pauline Ferrand-Prévot in 2025.
Even with that out of the picture, there are still some weird and wonderful tyre tech highlights to be found.
Sticking with Visma–Lease a Bike, some of the women’s team are riding the same glued-on tubeless tyres as last year in a bid to help tyres seal if a tyre burps on the cobbles.
Elsewhere, as first reported by Cyclingnews, Lidl–Trek is set to use Odyssey’s Optis inflatable tyre liner at Paris-Roubaix.
Unlike foam inserts, the liner is pressurised, allowing the tyre to be run at lower pressures while adding impact protection for the rim, and helping riders keep going after a puncture.
