Vittoria Corsa Pro Control TLR tyre review

The Vittoria Corsa Pro Control is the Italian brand’s latest high-performance, all-season road tyre.

Like its racier sibling, the Corsa Pro TLR, it has a 320 TPI (Threads Per Inch) tubeless-ready cotton casing, layered over with a graphene and silica-imbued compound.

The Vittoria Corsa Pro Control TLR impressed me with its overall ride quality, grip levels, and the confidence it gave me to push into corners even when conditions were less than ideal.

In exchange, though, I had to put up with a difficult installation experience.

Vittoria Corsa Pro Control TLR details and specifications

The ‘Control’ iteration of the Corsa Pro tyre family is intended to offer a little more puncture protection and longevity, in exchange for some added weight, compared to the range-topping Corsa Pro TLR.

It achieves this through thickening the tread on top of the standard Corsa Pro TLR casing, rather than adding any additional protective layers.

This approach is similar to the one used for the Pirelli P-Zero Race 4S TLR and Continental Grand Prix 5000 AS TR competitor tyres.

Thickening the thread is said to maintain the ride quality the 320TPI cotton casing and electrically vulcanised construction brings, which my colleague Simon von Bromley has verified through his testing of the flagship race tyre.

The weight is relatively low for an all-season tyre – my 700x28mm samples were 314g apiece, 30g less than the Pirelli P-Zero Race 4S TLR, and 29g lighter than the GP5000 AS TR.

The shoulders of the tyre have a ‘fishbone’ texture added compared to the Corsa Pro TLR (the lined grooves remain).

Vittoria says these enable “better handling” when cornering. At any rate, when I rubbed my thumb across the shoulders (once I’d worn away the slick releasing agent most tyres come with when fresh out of the box), it felt grippier than the Corsa Pro TLR.

The brand also says this Control iteration of the tyre is mainly chosen over the Corsa Pro TLR for its sponsored team’s assaults on the Spring Classics.

That said, when Mathieu van der Poel won the 2023 Paris-Roubaix – arguably the toughest classic on the calendar – earlier this year, he opted for standard Corsa Pro TLR tyres instead.

The Corsa Pro Control tyre costs £89.99 / $99.99 / €94.95, which (sadly) is in line with industry-wide price hikes in recent times.

The Continental GP5000 AS TR is similarly priced, but cheaper options are available, like the Goodyear Vector 4Season Tubeless Complete tyre (£65 / $80) and Pirelli P-Zero Race TLR 4S (£78.99 in 28mm).

Vittoria Corsa Pro Control TLR installation and setup

My experience of using the Vittoria Corsa Pro Control TLR tyre was spoiled somewhat by a difficult installation experience.

Where the vast majority of the latest-generation tubeless tyres will seat with the use of just a track pump, the Corsa Pro Control TLR resisted.

The bead is very flexible. While this makes getting the tyre over the rim a breeze (I didn’t need to use a lever at all) I found it made creating any kind of localised seal around the valve – from which I can usually inflate a tyre and pop it into place – nigh-impossible.

I took to using a tubeless inflator, but the relatively loose fit on two distinct rims (one carbon, one aluminium) simply meant the pressurised air escaped too quickly to build enough pressure and force it into place.

The same happened using tubeless sealant to attempt to clog the gaps and create the partial seal I needed, and a CO2 canister to give a rapid, powerful blast of air.

Not wishing to fail any more (or create more mess), I resorted to using my neighbour’s industrial compressor. Both tyres popped into place using this far more powerful and prolonged attack of air, but only after a significant amount of cajoling by repeatedly bouncing the setup on the floor.

The natural worry, then, is that should you need to unseat the tyre for any reason by the side of the road, you’re unlikely to be able to get a tubeless setup back up and running again.

Of course, you can use a tube to get you home (the sealed cavity this provides will negate the sealing issues), but you’ll need to go through the process again when you get back to reset the tubeless setup.

Given this, I'd strongly recommend carrying a dedicated tubeless repair kit to plug any holes which can’t be fixed by tubeless sealant alone. This should mean you don’t need to unseat the tyre beads.

Vittoria Corsa Pro Control TLR performance

When the tyre is fitted, it’s brilliant – one of the very best of its type when it comes to delivering riding confidence.

Vittoria has done a great job of keeping the outstanding suppleness of the flagship race tyre – if pressed, I’d struggle to tell the difference between the two.

The low weight probably helps a little here, but I suspect it’s less about the grams themselves and more about the physical construction of the tyre, which mirrors that of the Corsa Pro TLR.

The tactile ride quality meant I could push hard into corners, and (perhaps most importantly) have confidence that I’d stick to the road even over wet ground.

Of course, fundamentally, conditions limit grip levels and there are no magic tricks here. But irrespective, the compound and fishbone tread helps to maximise what’s available, and the construction enabled me to use it.

Like the Corsa Pro TLR, the 28mm Corsa Pro Control TLR tyre inflated a little narrower than its stated width – 27.7mm on a 20mm-wide rim (internal width) at 80 PSI / 5.5 BAR – but I didn’t find this hampered me.

The nature of the supple construction would appear to counter any marginal gains in tyre volume when it comes to comfort.

The tyre feels fast too. Although the Corsa Pro TLR fell slightly short of expectations in our own recent fast tyre group test, we couldn’t tell the difference when actually riding.

The same, without the benefit of an empirical rolling resistance test in this case, applies here when I compare them to the Continental Grand Prix 5000 AS TR.

It’s worth noting, I had to be sure to inflate the tyres before every ride. This is good practice anyway, but I found I regularly lost upwards of 20 PSI in the space of 24 hours – more than I’d ever be comfortable ‘just leaving’ for a ride.

Vittoria Corsa Pro Control TLR bottom line

The Vittoria Corsa Pro Control TLR tyre impresses on the one hand, and disappoints on the other.

The supple ride quality is excellent – the best I’ve felt from a tyre of its type – which makes riding a bike, even in grip-limited wet conditions, an enjoyable, tactile experience. When dry, it’s even a match for its racier sibling, and the grip is impressive too.

Sadly, the difficulty seating the tyre spoils the overall ownership experience. It shouldn’t be as challenging as it is, and I know, in the back of my mind, it’s a real problem waiting to happen if it ever needs reseating.

Rightfully, that should put a good few people off. But, if you can put up with that, or are confident in your own tubeless setup wizardry, then the Corsa Pro Control TLR tyre is one of the best-performing all-season road tyres once it’s installed.