Safety concerns, tubeless domination and hooked rims on the rise | Tour de France tyre trends under the microscope

Tyres are always a hot topic in any pro road race, but nowhere more so than at the Tour de France, the sport’s biggest and most important event.

As is tradition, the Grand Départ offered us the opportunity to tour team hotels, with our vernier calipers and notebooks in hand, dissecting the wheel and tyre setups of some of the biggest names in the sport.

There was, as always, plenty to learn.

In previous years, we’ve seen teams using a wide variety of solutions, with everything from narrow tubulars to clinchers and wide tubeless tyres on hookless rims.

At this year’s race, though, it seems the tubeless takeover of the pro peloton may finally be complete.

Concurrently, super-fast time trial tyres continue to grow in popularity – and not everyone's happy about it. There are no easy answers to the question of what, if anything, can be done about this trend, though.

Beyond that, there have been subtle but notable developments in wheels and tyres.

After years of Tour de France rims and tyres getting wider, this year sees a high-profile team rowing back on that trend, while hooked rims are also making a comeback.

With that in mind, here are the all the biggest trends in wheels and tyres from the 2025 Tour de France.

Tubeless domination

Tubeless tyres have been slowly gaining traction within the pro peloton in the last decade, as teams have moved away from narrow, tubular tyres and rims (typically combined with frighteningly high tyre pressures) towards wider, tubeless setups run at lower pressures.

Things really started to gather pace in this area around 2019, just after the UCI finally approved the use of disc brakes in the WorldTour.

With this, bike brands started pushing frame clearances, and interest in wider rims and tyres ballooned (if you’ll excuse the pun).

As so often with new technologies, widespread professional uptake of tubeless tyres was neither instant or universal. Instead, it has taken a number of years for everyone to be convinced.

As recently as the 2023 Tour de France, for example, Jonas Vingegaard was still using 24mm-wide tubular tyres on his Cervélo S5.

This year, it seems he and everyone else at the Tour are all-in on tubeless.

Even the Specialized-sponsored teams, who have consistently refused to move on from the brand’s S-Works Turbo Cotton clincher tyres since switching to the clincher-only Roval Rapide and Aplinist CLX wheels in 2020, were all on new Turbo Cotton TLR or Turbo RapidAir tubeless tyres.

Of course, we weren’t able to inspect every team’s setup at the Grand Départ in Lille, but we also haven’t spotted a single clincher or tubular setup during the race so far.

With this year’s mountain stages still to come, it’s possible a few riders will change their setups in the coming days (starting today, with a summit finish at Hautacam), but we suspect most – if not all – will simply swap to narrower or lighter tubeless setups in a bid to shave off any unwanted grams.

The reason for this is that today’s tubeless setups are simply the fastest option available.

There’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy here, of course – where all the new developments in road bike tyres are coming in tubeless tech, making them the fastest option almost by default.

However, tubeless tyres have specific advantages that enable other teams and riders to take calculated risks that would have been near-unthinkable in the past, such as using dedicated time trial tyres for road stages.

Time trial tyres continue to gain popularity

The lightest, thinnest tyres available have typically been reserved for short time trials only, because the increased likelihood of punctures they entail was generally thought to be too risky.

The latest generation of tubeless time trial tyres have upended this belief, though.

While there were no doubt other riders doing so previously, one of the major drivers behind this trend has been Tadej Pogačar, the defending Tour champion and road cycling’s current best all-round rider.

We first spotted Pogačar using Continental’s GP5000 TT TR tyres, in place of the standard GP5000 S TR, at the 2023 Tour de France, on a set of super-wide ENVE SES 4.5 rims (a combination that, incidentally, is no longer UCI-legal – more on this shortly), and many other teams and riders are now following suit.

Geraint Thomas' final Tour de France bike was equipped with the same Conti TT tyres when we saw it in Lille, for example, while Vittoria’s TT-specific, Corsa Pro Speed TLR tyres – the fastest road bike tyres currently available, according to bicyclerollingresistance.com – played a small, but important, part in Ben Healy’s epic breakaway victory on stage 6.

The bikes of Alpecin-Deceuninck power couple, Mathieu van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen, were also equipped with Pirelli’s “fastest-ever” option – the P Zero Race TLR RS (in a size 30c) – when they dominated the opening two stages.

And while Felix Gall’s Van Rysel RCR-F aero bike was set up with a GP5000 S TR rear tyre and a Continental Aero 111 front tyre at the Grand Départ in Lille, his Decathlon–AG2R La Mondiale team confirmed it would also be using the GP5000 TT TR tyres for certain race days.

Could TT tyres be the UCI’s next target?

Not everyone feels this trend is all gain and no pain, though.

A prominent figure within one team at this year’s Tour expressed concerns these kinds of tyres are too delicate for road racing, and cited the increased likelihood of punctures – due to the thinner casings and tread used – as a potential contributor to crashes.

Of course, it’s impossible to lay the blame for pro cycling’s ongoing safety woes at the feet of any one thing (unless you’re the UCI or ASO, which seem to believe it’s all the rider’s fault).

However, we’ve heard rumblings that team mechanics are replacing such tyres every 500 to 1,000km or so, hoping to avoid these problems – which could mean at least once per week at races such as the Tour.

As with potential restrictions on gearing, time trial helmets, rim depths, handlebar widths and so on, implementing a simple ban on TT tyres in road races could be complicated, though.

After all, as with TT helmets, it’s not exactly clear how to define a ‘TT tyre’.

The clue is in the name with certain models, of course, such as Continental’s GP5000 TT TR, but are Pirelli’s P Zero RS, Hutchinson's Blackbird Race and Specialized’s S-Works Turbo RapidAir tyres time-trial specific or all-rounder options?

All are claimed to be the fastest tyres the respective brands have ever produced, but that alone surely isn’t enough to say conclusively they are time-trial specific tyres.

Just as with time trial helmets and aero road helmets, there are no clear distinctions between TT and all-rounder tyres – as things stand, they all live on a spectrum.

The UCI could feasibly establish an arbitrary distinction by mandating a minimum tyre weight or tread thickness for mass-start road events (given thicker, heavier tyres tend to resist punctures more effectively), but compliance with such measures would be tricky to enforce via typical spot-checks on pro bikes at races.

While the UCI hasn’t indicated it has any intentions to ban TT tyres (yet?), it certainly seems like an area it might be interested in regulating more heavily, seeing as it said curbing “excessive top speeds” was the primary driver behind its recently announced glut of new regulations.

As so often, though, technology races ahead and those in charge of the sport only seem capable of trying to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted.

We have to go back, ENVE! Back to the future!

For a number of years, the rims and tyres being used at the Tour de France have been growing steadily in size.

At last year’s race, for example, we measured the 30c Conti GP5000 STR tyres on Pogačar’s V4Rs at 33.3 and 32.5m wide, front and rear, mounted on a 32mm-wide ENVE SES 4.5 wheelset.

This year, though, Pogačar has a new ENVE SES 4.5 Pro wheelset – which bucks current trends by using narrower, hooked rims – and is back on skinnier, 28c GP5000 TT TR tyres.

To explain why, we need to revisit Thomas De Gendt’s crash at the 2024 UAE Tour (briefly, we promise).

Following this incident, the UCI issued a directive reminding teams of the need to comply with the latest ISO and ETRTO standards concerning compatible rim and tyre widths.

Given the ENVE SES 4.5 rims had a 25mm internal width, that meant the 28c GP5000 TT TRs were – officially at least – off the menu for Pogačar and his teammates, because of an ISO standard that had been updated in 2023, changing the minimum tyre size for 25mm-wide rims from 28 to 29c.

Of course, Pogačar could have simply asked Continental to start making the GP5000 TT TR in a larger size, such as 30 or even 29c (as Vittoria has done with its ‘Wide Rim Optimised’ tyres), but that would almost certainly have meant added weight – something that's anathema to any general classification contender at the Tour.

It seems Pogačar and his teammates felt 28c tyres – which measure a healthy 31.25 and 31.28mm, front and rear, on the new 23.5mm-wide SES 4.5 Pro rims – are wide enough, and that cutting excess weight was the way forward.

It was an effective strategy, too, because we weighed Pogačar’s Colnago V5Rs at only 6.765kg at this year’s Grand Départ, compared to 7.27kg for his V4Rs at last year’s race.

Eagle-eyed readers will doubtless notice that’s less than the UCI’s minimum bike weight limit of 6.8kg, but the addition of a race number will no doubt have sorted that out (it’s a nice problem to have, as football managers love to say).

For most teams, though, 28c is as skinny as they want to go. The only 25c tyre we saw was on Geraint Thomas’ Pinarello Dogma F, and only on the front wheel.

We imagine this is for better aero performance with his relatively narrow Shimano Dura-Ace C50 wheels, though, and that he might opt for something slightly wider when using the Princeton CarbonWorks wheels the team also has in its stable.

Mini-hooks on the rise

As tubeless tyres have taken over the pro peloton, hookless rims have risen in prominence concurrently, thanks to the backing of high-profile WorldTour sponsors such as ENVE, Zipp and Giant.

In the wake of De Gendt’s incident at the 2024 UAE Tour, though, Adam Hansen, president of the riders' union (the CPA), posted on Twitter / X, saying “The @cpacycling is not happy with riders racing on Hookless system in the peloton. There have been concerns from riders and teams with this new system.”

Although Vittoria, De Gendt’s tyre sponsor, claimed soon afterwards that the incident was “unrelated” to his Zipp hookless rims, the UCI announcing it would be investigating the use of such rims in pro cycling probably didn’t help calm anyone’s nerves.

Given this, it’s notable that ENVE’s latest SES 4.5 Pro wheelset has ‘mini-hooks’, like those seen on the Reserve, Black Inc, Ursus and Oquo wheels, used by Visma-Lease a Bike,  Israel-Premier Tech, Team Picnic PostNL and Lotto, respectively.

In fact, only four out of 23 teams at this year’s Tour are using hookless rims – Intermarché-Wanty with its Newmen wheels, Movistar with Zipp, Team Jayco-AlUla with Cadex and UAE Team Emirates XRG with its existing ENVE SES hookless rims (there’s only a ‘Pro’ version of the 4.5s so far).

Curiously, the reason given by ENVE for its U-turn on hookless is that milling out the area under the mini-hooks makes for lighter rims. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t removing all of the remaining material that forms the mini-hooks have made the rims even lighter?

After all, removing the material needed for a bead hook has long been given as one of the primary reasons hookless rims could be lighter, and therefore could offer better performance, than hooked ones.

In contrast, Specialized's latest Roval Rapide CLX III and Rapide CLX Sprint wheelsets, as used by the likes of Remco Evenepoel, Tim Merlier and Primož Roglič, feature comparatively fat bead hooks – dubbed 'FlatStop bead hooks' – designed to reduce the chance of pinch flats.

Having spoken to an insider at a high-profile wheel brand in the wake of the latest hookless scandal – which involved former chairman of the Bicycle Wheel Technical Committee, Josh Poertner, claiming such rims are “a scam” – we believe the about-face could be due to pressure from the riders and teams themselves.

Pro teams, our source said, “prefer the simplicity of hooked rims”.

Of course, pro teams also preferred things such as rim brakes, tubular wheels and tyres and, long ago, riding without helmets, so it’s safe to say pros don’t always get what they want (even if marketing departments love to spin tales about how the latest kit is designed in collaboration with the greatest riders on the planet).