Buyer's guide
how to choose your road tires
All the informations and advice to choose the right tires for road cycling.
Buyer's guide
how to choose your road tires
All the informations and advice to choose the right tires for road cycling.
ROAD TIRES TREAD RANGE
TURBO
Competitive road riders need a fast, light, and tough tire, and the Turbo meets the needs. Extremely low rolling resistance and superior cornering traction lets you climb easily, descend quickly, and corner aggressively. The pinnacle of our tire technology is embodied in the Turbo family. The S-Works Turbo leads the line as the most popular and most versatile Turbo road tire.
TURBO
Competitive road riders need a fast, light, and tough tire, and the Turbo meets the needs. Extremely low rolling resistance and superior cornering traction lets you climb easily, descend quickly, and corner aggressively. The pinnacle of our tire technology is embodied in the Turbo family. The S-Works Turbo leads the line as the most popular and most versatile Turbo road tire.
ROUBAIX
The Roubaix is an Endurance Road tire suitable for epic rides from smooth country roads to rough field roads. The Roubaix is as fast like any competitive road tire, yet features our unique Endurant casing technology for added comfort and puncture protection.
ROUBAIX
The Roubaix is an Endurance Road tire suitable for epic rides from smooth country roads to rough field roads. The Roubaix is as fast like any competitive road tire, yet features our unique Endurant casing technology for added comfort and puncture protection.
ALL CONDITION
The All Condition Armadillo line continues to lead the market for top performance as a tough, puncture resistant road tire for severe conditions. This workhorse tire is super robust for touring and commuting and tough enough to navigate the roughest road conditions. A lighter weight version, the Armadillo Elite, is ideal for the year-round mile-eater.
ALL CONDITION
The All Condition Armadillo line continues to lead the market for top performance as a tough, puncture resistant road tire for severe conditions. This workhorse tire is super robust for touring and commuting and tough enough to navigate the roughest road conditions. A lighter weight version, the Armadillo Elite, is ideal for the year-round mile-eater.
OUR CASING
Our proprietary Gripton compound achieves some lofty goals – such as being a key component of the fastest tires in the world. Utilizing mostly synthetic rubber reinforced with silicon dioxide, Gripton experiences less hysteresis loss than natural rubber. The compounds in Gripton tires are not as dense as carbon black compounds, and experience less internal friction and resultant temperature build up when deformed. Silica is also porous, and as a result absorbs less energy than carbon black compounds. Therefore, Gripton dissipates less energy than other compounds, and tires using Gripton run cooler, more smoothly, more efficiently. Most importantly though, they roll faster. Faster than anything else. Fast enough to win World Championships.
RAPIDAIR tubeless ready tire technology is changing the world, turning the page on the century-long chapter of tubulars in professional racing. Clinchers have traditionally been made with a single casing ply that overlaps under the tread, massing material where it hurts rolling resistance and ride quality. Instead, for the Rapidair construction we use two thin plies that overlap at the side wall. It makes a tire that rolls 10% faster and grips better than our race tubulars, while mounting and holding air more consistently.
The Turbo Cotton is built from a handbrushed 320tpi cotton casing – individual fibers are extremely thin and flexible, and the brushed-on latex impregnation is extremely elastic, creating a casing that adapts effortlessly to the road surface. For the smoothest ride.
WHY ARE WIDER TIRES FASTER ?
Today 26mm wide casings are the new normal and even 28mm wide tires – typically reserved for the gnarly spring races – are preferred by some riders throughout the season. A wide tire can be run at lower pressure than a narrow tire. This in turn allows that tire to conform to road surface irregularities. That means the tire is able to roll more smoothly over that surface, with greater traction and control. Ultimately, this means a wider tire will be able to roll FASTER over that surface, since it is not losing energy reacting to and being deflected by surface irregularities. This applies for all surfaces, but the rougher the road the faster the wider tire will be compared to its narrower predecessor.
Greater tire volume changes the shape of a tire’s contact patch, rendering it shorter and wider for a given air pressure. This has also been proven to roll faster. Additionally, for a given pressure, a larger volume tire will deform \(bulge\) less at its contact patch when rolling or cornering. Deformation is energy lost, pure and simple. So, not only will a larger tire roll more comfortably over a given surface, it will be deforming less as it rolls. It will be rolling SMOOTHER and FASTER than a narrower tire. Period.