The 2025 Tour de France week is almost here, so let’s look ahead to some of the tech trends that could define this year’s race.
For the 184 riders taking to the start line in Lille on Saturday, the coming 21 days of racing could change their lives.
With that in mind, every rider and team will be going all out to give themselves the best chance of taking a stage win or wearing one of the Tour’s coveted leader's jerseys.
The Tour is, as the cliché goes, also the sport’s biggest shop window, meaning each bike, component and kit brand brings its latest and greatest wears to show off to the watching world.
At last year’s race, much of the tech talk centred around 1x drivetrains, new aero bikes and kit, chunky tubeless tyres and waxed chains.
As usual, BikeRadar will be at the Tour de France Grand Départ, bringing you all of the most important news and tech stories from the ground, but here’s what we think some of major trends will be at this year’s race.
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Aero bikes are back
Anyone who has been following road cycling for long enough will know the pendulum of what’s considered ‘peak performance’ tends to swing between full-fat aero and lightweight all-rounder bikes.
At last year’s Tour, which featured a hilly Grand Départ in Florence, Italy, all-rounder bikes were à la mode.
In contrast, this year’s relatively flat opening week in Lille and Northern France will almost certainly prompt aero bikes to make a strong comeback.
We’ve already had a sneak peak of a new Factor aero bike (a Hanzo Road, perhaps – given it seems to take heavy design inspiration from Factor’s Hanzo time trial bike), as well as Cervélo’s updated S5, at the Critérium du Dauphiné earlier this month, but could we see any other new bikes in July?
If the platform hasn’t been mothballed, Cannondale’s long-standing SystemSix is in desperate need of an update, while Merida’s Reacto is also starting to feel long-in-the-tooth.
The watt weenies among us still hold hope for a new Specialized Venge, too.
The opening stage looks almost certain to end in a bunch gallop, with a kilometre-long drag race to the finish line – perfect territory for a no-holds-barred aero bike.
It’s a rare chance for a sprinter (or someone other than Tadej Pogačar) to wear le maillot jaune – the sport’s most coveted jersey – so expect to see them and their leadout teams pulling out all the aero stops.
Last chance saloon for soon-to-be-banned tech
With the UCI’s new regulations banning narrow handlebars, super-deep rims and time trial helmets in road races not coming into effect until next season, we can expect to see all of those things being used at this year’s Tour.
Many riders in SRAM-sponsored teams will make use of 1x drivetrains, for a small aero gain, while almost every rider in the peloton will be using dinner plate-sized chainrings to improve their drivetrain efficiency (which could also be banned if the UCI’s upcoming gear restrictions trial has the desired effect of reducing the speed of the peloton).
When Mark Cavendish took a historic 35th stage win at last year’s Tour, he did so with aero water bottles on his custom-painted Wilier Filante SLR, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see other sprinters following suit at this year’s race.
We even saw riders from UAE Team Emirates XRG using aero-optimised CarbonTi disc brake rotors in time trials at last year’s race, so perhaps those will see action in the road stages too.
Tyres will keep trending wider
28c has been the most popular tyre size in the pro peloton in recent years, but if the peloton has been paying attention they’ll have noticed Tadej Pogačar – currently regarded as the best all-rounder in men’s road cycling and hot favourite for this year’s Tour – has been using much wider tyres for a number of years.
At the 2023 Tour, for example, his Continental GP5000 TT TR tyres measured around 32mm wide on his Colnago V4Rs, whereas last year his bike was equipped with even wider GP5000 S TR tyres.
Given his dominance at last year’s Tour (and at almost every other race the World Champion has entered in the past 18 months), we suspect plenty of other riders will have sat up and taken notice.
It’s important to note this isn’t simply a case of riders moving up tyre sizes, it’s a combination of rim and tyre tech developing in tandem.
Many road bike wheel manufacturers are pushing for wider rims, which help eke more volume out of tyres and can improve aerodynamic performance.
In response to this trend – and a directive from the UCI, following Thomas De Gendt’s crash at the 2024 UAE Tour, that teams must adhere to the latest ETRTO guidelines on rim and tyre compatibility – teams are speccing wider tyres on their bikes.
Some tyre brands, such as Vittoria and Continental, are even making tyres specifically for this trend, such as the 29c, 'Wide Rim Optimised' Vittoria Corsa Pro and Corsa Speed TLR, and Conti’s new 30c Archetype tyre – the latter of which will be used exclusively by Pogačar and his teammates at this year’s Tour.
Short cranks for many – but not everyone
Bike fitters might argue there’s no such thing as ‘the best crank length for cycling’, but that hasn’t stopped pro road racers experimenting in recent years.
Long cranks were popular among pros for a number of years – likely because wide-range cassettes and compact cranksets were a rare sight in days gone by, and longer cranks make bigger gears feel easier to push because of their increased leverage.
Nowadays, though, with the availability of huge cassettes and a variety of chainring options, many pros are experimenting with shorter cranks.
Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel, for example, have both switched to 165mm cranks, while Jonas Vingegaard was trialling a set of tiny 150mm cranks earlier this season.
The theory is that shorter cranks don’t cause any drop in power (because what you lose in torque, you make up for in pedal speed), but they enable a rider to adopt a more aerodynamic riding position without impinging on their hips.
Phil Burt, a leading bike fitter and former head of physiotherapy at British Cycling, says shorter cranks can also reduce strain on your knees and back – potentially helping to lessen the chance of injuries, too.
Nevertheless, not everyone’s rushing to sub-170mm cranks. While the podium finishers at last year’s Tour have all downsized, it’s worth remembering they’re far from the tallest riders in the pro peloton.
Nominally ‘longer’ cranks inevitably make up a smaller percentage of a taller rider’s leg length, so as often with bike fit-related things, it’s about finding the right balance for each individual.
No more clinchers or tubulars, at last?
Despite tubeless tyres having largely taken over in the pro peloton in recent years, there have been some hold-outs for clincher and tubular tyres in the past couple of years.
Specialized-sponsored teams, in particular, have doggedly stuck with the brand’s Turbo Cotton clincher tyres – despite the American brand releasing a number of tubeless models in recent years.
Its original S-Works Turbo RapidAir tubeless tyre, for example, was developed to tempt its pro riders away from the tubular tyres popular at the time (the tyre launched in 2019 when tubulars still ruled the roost in pro road racing).
The tide could finally be about to turn, though, because Evenepoel and his Soudal Quick-Step teammates were using unreleased Turbo Cotton TLR tyres at the Dauphine this year (with TLR almost certainly standing for ‘tubeless-ready’).
Of course, as was the case with Ben O’Connor’s prototype BMC aero road bike (a bike that turned out to be the BMC Teammachine R) at the 2023 Tour de France, we’ll likely see the odd rider making a personal choice to go with something different – such as Pirelli clinchers with TPU or latex inner tubes, in O’Connor's case.
For the most part, though, we expect the tubeless domination of the pro peloton to be almost entirely complete at this year's Tour.
Climbing bikes will come to the fore in the second half of the race
If you’ve been poring over the official Tour de France guide in recent weeks, you’ll know this year’s Tour doesn’t hit the mountains properly until stage 10, on Bastille Day.
Featuring 4,400m of climbing in a (relatively) short 165.3km, the stage will be a 'roller coaster ride' for the peloton, setting “a new record for the most second-category climbs on a single stage”.
It’s at this point we expect to see the teams breaking out their climbing bikes, with the mountains coming thick and fast from then on.
Although it's only 10.9km long, stage 13’s mountain time trial will see the riders tackling the category one climb to Peyragudes – an 8km climb at an average gradient of 7.9 per cent.
With gradients pushing well over double digits towards the finish, every rider will be looking to get their bike down to the UCI’s minimum weight limit of 6.8kg.
As with any hill climb time trial, it will be fascinating to see the different approaches teams and riders take to making their bikes as light and fast as possible.
Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe’s Primoz Roglic used a 1x SRAM Red XPLR AXS gravel groupset to snatch the 2023 Giro d’Italia victory away from friend of the BikeRadar podcast, Geraint Thomas, during the stage 20 mountain time trial, for example.
Will Shimano-sponsored riders be afforded a similar opportunity? The Japanese giant doesn’t officially support 1x drivetrains for road bikes, but as anyone who has seen a dedicated hill climb bike will know, having two chainrings means carrying dead weight when you’re only riding uphill.
Following that, this year’s Tour will visit the infamous Mont Ventoux on stage 16. The ‘Giant of Provence’ is a firm fixture of Tour legend, having been the scene of much heroism, comedy and tragedy over the years.
With a long, mostly flat run-in to the foot of the climb, the riders will then tackle the mountain’s toughest ascent from Bédoin, on the southern side.
Officially 15.7km long at an average gradient of 8.8 per cent (but 20.74km at 8.3 per cent, if you prefer to go by the Strava segment), the unrelentingly steep road and furnace-like heat that radiates from the tarmac on hot days makes this climb a real brute.
If the sun is shining (and it usually is in Provence in mid-July), expect to see domestiques ferrying ice packs and cold drinks to and from team cars as often as possible, to try to prevent their team leaders from overheating.
Stage 17 is a designated flat stage (although riders will need to watch out for crosswinds as the race heads north from Bolléne to Valance), but is followed swiftly by this Tour’s most demanding stage.
With 5,450m of climbing across 171.5km, including three hors catégorie climbs and a summit finish, stage 18 is one every cycling fan should have marked in their calendar.
No gravel or cobbles for the Tour this year
In the spirit of ensuring the race has ‘something for everyone’, the Tour often finds a way to work in a Classics-style stage with cobbles or, increasingly, gravel into the opening half of the race.
As in iconic one-day races such as Paris-Roubaix and Strade Bianche, the mixed parcours can create chaos, intrigue and, when the stars align, new legends of the sport.
It also leaves teams with decisions to make about tech – what bike, which tyres, tyre pressures, whether to run tyre inserts, what’s the plan if something goes wrong, and so on. This can all make for fascinating viewing – and can shake up the race.
Who could forget Vincenzo Nibali’s iconic ride from Ypres to Arenberg Porte du Hainaut, across the filthy wet Roubaix cobbles, for example?
Finishing third on the stage, minutes ahead of any other contender for the General Classification (defending champion, Chris Froome, crashed twice and abandoned the race during the same stage), the Shark of Messina built the foundations for his overall victory and cemented his place in Tour history that day.
This year, though, there’s no such stage. There is, of course, plenty else to get excited about, but with gravel cycling exploding in popularity in recent years we’re surprised the Tour hasn’t found a way to sprinkle even a small amount of it into this year’s race.
Of course, it’s fair to say not everyone thinks cobbles, gravel or the like belong in Grand Tours – team bosses, who don’t want to see months of preparation go up in smoke because of a crash on slippery cobbles or loose gravel, tend to be most outspoken against it.
It's also true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and if every Tour had a cobbled or gravel stage, perhaps the format would lose its novelty.
From our perspective as fans, though, it will be missed at this year's race.
