Best Tyre For Road Racing & Crits

Judging from your alias you might be from Denmark too. Around here, our road surfaces often contains crushed flint, which tends to be the main culprit behind most punctures. Especially in wet weather tires seem to attract these tiny (1-2 mm) sharp pieces of flint like fly paper. I haven’t experienced a big difference between GP4000 and GP5000, but one thing I have noticed is that the frequency of my punctures has gone down a lot since I started inspecting my tires before and during (when somebody else in the group inevitably has a flat…) my rides and removing the flint pieces as soon as I notice them. In the wet it can be impossible to avoid punctures completely around here, but a tubeless set up and/or more heavy duty tires like Pirelli Cinturato can improve things tremendously.

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As a training tire on racing wheels, the 25c tubeless Cinturato were great for 2200 miles / 3500km. On my wider gravel wheels, these 32c 5000 TR now have 1700 miles / 2700km setup tubeless at 60-65psi have had zero issues despite running over a lot of broken glass and screws and thorns. Saturday I ran over something and it sounded like I was going to flat, but came home and they were still fine.

All of 2020 I rode the Pro One TT. They are not made to be puncture resistant. In fact, by the end of the season, I had at least 10-15 seeping holes in the tread. Only a single puncture was a show stopper, which I plugged with a dart and kept rolling. At the time, they were the only tan wall tubeless road tires on the market. I’d probably pick something a little more durable for training rides. I was using Stan’s Race sealant then.