The Hottest 2024 Paris-Roubaix Tech Trends

Paris-Roubaix is a cycling tech nerd’s dream with riders making changes to their bikes in the hope of smoothing the path across the old cobblestone roads.

Liam Cahill guides us through the biggest tech trends from the men’s and women’s 2024 race with wider tyres, aero frames, massive chainrings and new bar tape all on show.

Photo credits
📸 Matt Grayson
📸 Luc Claessen/Getty Images
📸 Dario Belingheri/Getty Images

#cycling #bike #roadbike #paris #roubaix #parisroubaix #race

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:10 Massive Tyres
01:04 Perfect Tyre Pressure
01:51 Hookless
02:47 Massive Chainrings
04:14 Aero Dominates Again
06:16 Gravel Bikes Are Back!
08:06 Extreme Bar Tape
08:54 Old Tech, New Race

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this year’s Parry rebate was another wild one and the tech was hot with everything from Massive Tires to super massive chain rings and even 3D bar tape let’s start with those tires because all the Riders seem to be jumping on this one and it’s official if it worked well for someone last year then you should just copy their homework vandero arrived in the Vel drone last year on 32 mm tubless tires and pretty much everyone decided that it was a very good idea we saw countless 32mm tires from a variety of Brands mistar fdj UAE and inos were all on continental’s gp5000 ST tires Alpin DSM EF ARCA visma and some others were on Victoria’s corser Pro Tires with a smash ring of Riders on the slightly grippier control version presumably to help them deal with wet sections of cobbles Schwab was represented by Canyon RAM and Michelin was one of the only Brands providing tub TI to its cofidis [Music] team tire pressures at this race are incredibly important you need to balance Comfort over the cobal with grip and speed we don’t usually know what pressure the Riders use but footage from the start of the race showed men’s winner Matthew vandero using 3.46 bar or 52 PSI in his 32 mm Victoria corser Pro tubless tires for a rider that is listed as weighing 7 5 kilos on procycling stats that is a seriously low pressure which you might think heightens his chances of puncturing but for the last 2 years Vander pole has come through the puncture fest with zero flats and this is crucial information if you are also 75 kilos and you need to get from Paris to rube in record time a quick word on hookless now despite the noise surrounding hookless safety concerns in the prop pelaton we saw plenty of teams lining up on hookless rims at last year’s race we saw several dismounted tubless tires though they were on a mix of hooked and hookless rims several of these dismounted tires were spotted in the aftermath of crashes but it wasn’t clear whether or not they were the cause but tires dismounting in crashes is not exclusively an issue for hookless rims I’ve crashed when my tubet tires rolled off its Rim in a cyclocross race and a clincher Tire with an inner tube also won’t remain securely attached in the event of a puncture in this year’s race we saw nothing comparable to 2023 both the men’s and women’s races were relatively free of crashes and dismounted tires but we’d love for the industry to push further on hookless safety this might make your knees hurt but Ben Turner of inos had a 6 to chain ring fitted and his teammate Josh tling rocked up to the start line with a 622 Whopper now before you think that that’s fine they’ve got an inner ring to fall back on no the young Brits were rocking a one by setup with an 11 to 34 Toth cassette out back theirs weren’t the only dinner plates in the race though Lily Williams of the human powered Health team had a double slam setup with a 54 to Outer ring but they were the outliers on their respective group sets the majority of Shimano Riders unlike Tarling went for a 2 by setup with a 54 or 56 Toth outer and a 46 or 48 Toth inner ring suram Riders seemed ever more content with a one by setup and we saw a mix of 54 and 52 tooth chain rings on show while rubet is thought of as a flat race it packs some serious elevation climbing 1,414 M over the 260 km route so why do Riders want bigger gears for this race well it’s the sheer speed and chaos of the race which leads to Riders chasing across gaps attacking in Crosswinds and generally riding quite fast but would you run such a big chain ring mines just ache thinking about it given the brutal cobblestones you might expect Peru Ru to be a slower race but in recent years the average speeds have been incredible with 2024’s men’s race aing just over 47 kmph with the semi muddy conditions this year both men’s and women’s pelons exercised a little bit of caution but Arrow once again played a major role in bike and clothing choices the key indicator for me were the specialized sponsored athletes the American brand has a bike specifically named after this very race so we usually see their sponsored Riders swinging a leg over the S Works ruet SD works though were all on the tarmac sl8 as were the sudal quickstep team some Riders did for their Brand’s endurance bike Alisa balamo was probably the highest Place Rider I saw on one using TX de Mane and Mariana Voss used sell’s soloist but the men’s pelaton was a wash with arrow frames the podium featured two Canyon arrows and mads pedison Tre madone the arrow touches didn’t stop with the bikes lot of keki went all in with a full white World Champ skin suit and nearly everyone was wearing Arrow socks it was vaner who came out as the winner on the sock game to though as he wore custom World Champ zift Arrow socks you know you’ve made it when you’ve got a pair of those Riders will only go so far though handlebars are a key component for comfort and many riders chose to switch from their one piece Arrow cockpits to take advantage of a round bar these quite simply can be comfier over the cobblestones or offer a ride at a more secure hold of the bar than they’d get on bare carbon we saw a plethora of roal rapid cockpits gone from the front end of various tarmac sl8 with the teams fitting round bars from the likes of pro and specialized Casper ascreen even shunned carbon using an aluminium shallow drop bar from [Music] 2014 there’s just one slight problem with those fancy airrow bikes they don’t sometimes offer much clearance around bigger 30 and 32 mm tires that you need for this race and that was going to be an issue this year Israel Premier Tech was one team that left their Factor ostram road bikes at home in favor of the factor ostr gravel that took Tire clearance up from 32 mm to a whopping 45 mm ensuring the wheels kept turning over the sometimes muddy cobbles but it wasn’t the only reason Gary blem the team’s equipment manager told us that they did a lot of testing on the cobbles after opening weekend and apparently the overwhelming consensus from the Riders was that the gravel bike would be the best choice for rub Bay he says that the gravel bike has a longer wheelbase so it tracks slower giving the Riders more time to react but surely a gravel bike would be slower well we have to remember that this is an aerrow gravel bike so Factor says there isn’t too much of a compromise on aerodynamics and feedback from the Riders was that they would opt for Comfort over Arrow anyway in the end end the choice had no impact on the men’s race with the team’s Riders soon distanced under the pressure applied by Vander Paul’s team and bikes weren’t the only gravel thing we saw Casper ascreen was rocking a roal terret CLX rear wheel quite why I’m not 100% sure but I bet it has something to do with the larger inner rim width on the gravel wheel it’s been a fair few years since we sought cyclocross bikes and gravel bikes used for Parry rube and I have to say I’m loving seeing them again because let’s be real if we want to ride over the cobbles a gravel bike is what we’d [Music] take it is common to see double wrapped bars at par rate with some Riders preferring their bartape to be just a little bit thicker than usual but I don’t think we’ve seen this before last year’s winner Alison Jackson had some properly grippy looking progo bartape at the front of her canondale super six it’s their OneTouch 3D tape which was launched just before the women’s race started and yes I’m absolutely getting a rooll of this in for Tech of the month because it’s a long time since we’ve seen any innovation in the bar tape department but for those that didn’t have 3D bar tape there’s always a classic solution of a double layer of [Music] tape okay so you can have all of the fancy Arrow frames and special tires that you like sometimes the old ways are just the best no race is quite like rube for stem notes some Riders like Voss handw wrote their notes while other teams got nicely colorcoded spreadsheets with little emojis which method works best is Up For Debate but the fact is that you’ll need a pretty long stem to fit all of those notes on Voss for example nearly ran out of room rube also places demands on literally anything that has the potential to Rattle loose lot of keki even had to tight and her bars on the move after they slipped after an early Cobble sector most Riders will try to limit the chance of computers flying off now this cofidis Rider used some kind of fluffy tape this EF Rider though kept it simple with what looks like carpet tape and if all else fails a little dongle will at least keep a computer kind of dangling from the bars Stephan Kung meanwhile he didn’t want the charging port door coming open on his Garmin if in doubt just tape it shot the decathlon ag2r team was one of many using grip tape on the inside of their bottle cages Fifer Georgie though her lovely Scot foil was finished with a good old pair of metal Elite bottle cages that can be bent in to hold the bottles securely but it didn’t work for everyone bottles were still flying everywhere and Sam wellsford took to Twitter to ask for his hammer head back if you see it let him know well the that was a bit of a Whistle Stop tour my highlight was definitely The Wider tires I think you and I can use that on our bikes at home because we might not be racing over the cobblestones but I don’t know about you my local roads are not in much better condition and if I can be fast and comfortable I’ll take it if you want to see our video where we tested the fastest road bike tires why not just click up there don’t forget to like And subscribe and we will see you next time