There have been plenty of discussions regarding tubeless vs butyl vs TPU vs tubular. Mostly they are anecdotal along the lines of, I use X and I haven’t had a puncture in x years, or I used Y and it failed, etc. We have all of these anecdotes to justify our choice regarding what is faster or what is more reliable. And fine, if it works for you, use it. However, what I haven’t seen (perhaps I just have missed it) is actual long-term and large-enough sample-size data, particularly with respect to puncture resistance.
It seems to me that the pro-peloton has been on tubeless for enough kilometers that we could make historical comparisons. Putting aside the more catastrophic events when tires, inserts, etc, come undone, has tubeless actually led to fewer flats over the course of a season? Seems to me, this is knowable if only someone would do the counting. Has anyone? My own impression is that I really haven’t seen a decrease in the frequency of guys pulling off the the side of the road due to flats; however, my impression is not going to be sensitive enough to detect small (or even moderate) changes.
I’m willing to bet the UCI doesn’t have data on that or at least a robust data set. I think it’s more likely that some tire companies have such data for their own tires, maybe others, too, but I think they likely wouldn’t share that.
One problem I see with getting such data would be including the cause of each flat or tire failure. That’s something that might be impossible to determine for an observer. Another issue would collecting such data. I suspect there’s a large fraction of tire flats/failures that aren’t on film or video.
I think collecting said data would require the cooperation of the teams, and that might be hard to get.
Getting teams and tire producers to cooperate would indeed by challenging. However, one might argue that over the course of a season the myriad of reasons that would cause flats might be approximately the same myriad of reasons in another season’s of flats. Thus, simply counting for an entire season might average over all of those reasons and be a reasonable first approximation. Maybe? Maybe that’s a task for Ronan.
I will restate my question more provocatively. Has there been a dramatic a decrease in pro-peloton flats commensurate with the claims of the enthusiastic tubeless adherents?
(BTW, for what it’s worth, my garage has butyl, TPU, latex and tubeless, but not tubular.)
The problem is you can’t compare the number of flats in previous years to this year: tire construction is different, tire width is different, courses are different, etc. The only way to get meaningful data would be if you could go back several years when there was a mix of teams on tube & tubeless at the same time and see if one had more flats than another. But I doubt you could get this data in any meaningfully accurate way
The tire companies would have us believe that tire construction is better, or at least not worse. If that’s not the case, we have a whole different issue to contend with.
I’m suggesting that the pro-peloton is riding enough kms and so sampling enough roads under enough different conditions that, statistically speaking, one year is to first approximation equivalent to the next. Granted, that’s a big assumption on my part.
We don’t have historical data so my question is unanswerable in a rigorous way. Nevertheless, the marketed claims of tubeless superiority suggest to me that I should be seeing far fewer flats these days than I do. Maybe it is only a little better such that it is not enough for me to see watching TV but still a net marginal gain toward winning. Given that we look for 1 watt aero improvements, I hope someone becomes motivated to do better than my eye-ball test.
Even if it was possible, pros =/= amateurs. As I understand it, pros run their tubeless tyres with very little sealant (just enough to avoid any issues with tyre porosity), and so punctures that would seal fine for you or me lead to a flat for a pro. In addition, a pro will typically swap a wheel/bike rather than repair a puncture.
In the several years I’ve been running tubeless on road and gravel, I have punctured on several occasions. In some cases it has sealed with minimal loss of air; in some cases it has sealed but required an air top-up; in some cases I’ve had to stick a dynaplug in. I haven’t yet (touch wood) had to resort to putting in an inner tube and the total amount of roadside faff time has been much lower. In my books that is a “win” for tubeless, even if the actual number of punctures is not any lower.
(There is more faff at home, but I’ll take faffing in the relative comfort of my garage over faffing at the side of a cold, wet road any day!)
The problem is there is currently no way to get reliable data (or even data that is in probably +/- 50% of actual) for either current number of flats per race Km or historical. Even if you watched every Paris Roubaix race video, the length of coverage is longer now than in the past (confounding variable #1), flats for even the top contenders isn’t 100% reliable (confounding variable #2), let alone capturing flats for the rest of the peleton (confounding variables #3 - 100). Forget that in a race like Paris Roubaix the tire width has radically changed even over the last 5 years, let alone last 10 or 20
The net is that while this would be cool data to have, barring the UCI actually implementing safety protocols that would capture every rider who crashed, where on the race course they crashed, but the same for flats, we aren’t going to get anywhere near accurate data to even know what the “normal” tire flat year over year variation is. Which we would need to know to know if the change in technology is positively or negatively affecting the flat rate
