[music] Speaker:
Well, there's some weird going on here. I've just ridden that descent
pretty briskly with no air in my tires. They are completely
deflated. How? I've got some new tech here from Vittoria. It's called Air-Liner Road. It's a bit
like a run-flat system for bikes, except it's a run-flat system that weighs as little as 24 grams
per wheel. It's a run-flat system that doesn't add to your rolling resistance at
all. Your tire works completely normally. It's also a run-flat system that's been
used in secret in the Pro Peloton for two years. Interested? Let me tell you more.
Here you go then. The Air-Liner Road, a hexagonal looper foam that fits inside
your tubeless tire. Sounds simple and in principle it is, but the devil is in the details. You might
be familiar with the concept of run-flat in cars, but these are very, very different. In a car,
the sidewall of the tire is reinforced so that it can actually support the weight of the vehicle.
This would be disastrous on a bike because what we really want from our tires is for a lightweight,
supple casing that feels as smooth as silk to ride and rolls like a whisper. Now, fortunately,
Vittoria have been around for a bit. They're one of the top tire manufacturers. They know this too.
They've approached it differently. At this point, tech-savvy viewers might be saying,
"Well hang on a minute, Vittoria have been selling Air-Liners for mountain
bikes and gravel applications for a while now." Yes, they absolutely have, but these again, are
different. For off-road purposes, the Air-Liner is designed to do a number of things actually.
Firstly, it's designed to provide improved damping of your tire when you're running low pressure.
It's also designed to support the tire sidewall, particularly for cornering,
again, when you're running lower pressures for improved traction.
It also stops the tire casing from burping again, again at lower pressures.
The final thing is it also is designed to protect your rim from rock strikes again
when running lower pressures. The thing is on the road, we don't need to run really low
pressures for improved traction. We need to run low pressures sometimes for improved comfort.
Vittoria still spotted a use for this type of technology. What they've done is they've
actually changed the properties of the foam polymer, so that when you inflate your tire,
this then shrinks to a fraction of its size. Then it just lies hidden snugly in the rim bed. You can
see just how much it shrinks from this video. [background noise]
What it means then is it allows your super lightweight, supple tire to do its thing unimpeded
behaving completely normally because effectively there is nothing inside it.
Just fractionally less air volume because it's this tiny little strip of foam that's lying
secretly inside the rim bed. [music]
When you do get a puncture, though, as the pressure decreases in the tire, the Air-Liner
then increases in volume. It fills the void left in the tire. Vittoria say it's equivalent
to riding about 30 psi or 2 bar. The tire does still feel flat, but you're not riding on the rim,
not anywhere close. Importantly too, the Air-Liner is still really securely holding the bead of the
tire in place on the rim so the tires aren't going to slide or roll off when you're cornering.
This means there's no more risk from blowouts or super-fast punctures that would otherwise
cause you to crash or hit the deck to instead when you're to get a blowout you can just
continue riding safely and securely until you get home or team car rocks up with a new wheel.
[music] I think there's a couple of things we need to
tackle here. Firstly, pro cyclists have seemingly adopted this tech quickly and eagerly. Why? Then
secondly, how is that relevant for the rest of us? Let's tackle the pro cycling question first,
shall we? Until about three or four years ago, pro cyclists raced on tubular tires and that was
basically that. There were one or two exceptions, but they were notable for being exceptions.
The reason for this love of tubulars was firstly that they were faster. They literally rolled more
efficiently than clincher tires. Then secondly, if you've got a puncture, you could still keep riding
safely. That's because tubular tires are glued onto the rim. If you go around a corner, they're
not going to roll off. You're able to slow the bike down from high speeds or indeed keep riding
on the rim until you can get a replacement from your team car. Now, for us mere mortals, tubular
tires are expensive and also a massive pain. Unless you've got an army of mechanics behind you,
they are quite a faff. For racing, they were great. Now, things began to change though, because
tubular tires are no longer the fastest types of tires out there. Some tubeless tires can be
quicker. Peloton attempted to use them, but they were still failing at that "Can you keep riding
on a flat hurdle?" However, times have changed. Now you can use superfast tubeless tires. You
can still ride with them on a flat perhaps better, far better, in fact, that if you're
using a tubular. As I said a few teams have had access to this tech. UAE Emirates have
been riding it for a couple of years. Alexander Kristoff, in fact, won Gent-Wevelgem in 2019,
using a prototype Air-Liner. EF Nippo, the other team have got access to this tech. I'm just about
to catch up with their technical director Andreas Klier to find out how the team is using this tech?
How many riders have adopted it? Andreas, thanks very much for talking to us today.
I'm wondering whether you could give me the inside scoop on how the team is using tubeless
tires and Air-Liners. At the moment, is it a blanket swap from tubulars to tubeless,
or is this still a case of some races the riders are on tubulars and some they're on tubeless?
Andreas Klier: Yes. In general, they can choose. They did so last year. They did so in the very
beginning the season before when we started to do testing with prototypes of the Air-Liners
given the fact that we knew that tubeless is absolutely faster.
Not every rider bought into it immediately, but more and more the riders understand the advantage
from a tubeless tire versus a tubular. There is a mix here and there. We have races where
we ride fully tubeless. We have other races where not a single rider is riding tubeless.
That's the current standing. Speaker: Do the riders ever give you
the insight into why they're making a decision of one type of tire versus another? Is it that
they still feel that tubulars are faster even though the data backs up tubelsss being faster?
Andreas: No. That never comes up? Nobody would lift his hand and say tubular is faster than
tubeless. You have quite a choice inside our team. The good thing is you are free
to choose. Then the end of the day you always get what you want. We're very transparent team.
The riders like it. I like it. Maybe the mechanics have quite some work with it.
It's a lot of logistics. So far, things go quite well. The riders appreciate it.
For tomorrow's race [unintelligible 00:08:24] I think it's a split between four
tubular and three tubeless kind of flanders. Let's see probably same or other way around.
The big advantage you have, obviously, talking about classics with the Air-Liner,
is once you ride a flat, you just keep on riding. We have that with Alberto and Kent Wifigam.
He rode it from front flat in the sidewind. It was a moment when this 22-man group went off the road.
We basically couldn't react. It wasn't even the moment to stop and just change bike.
Knowing that 4k later, you had a section of 2k headwind, I just said, "Keep on riding. Once you
turn whatever how many kilometers into the left, you just stop and then I give you a front wheel."
[music] Speaker: Where does that leave the rest of us
then? Well, firstly, who doesn't want to go faster for less effort? Fast tires feel amazing. It's,
for this reason now I'm finally turning to tubeless on the road. I've been there for
two decades off-road. I have been slow to adapt on the road, I will admit. More important than that,
for many people, is no longer have to worry about changing an inner tube at the side of the road.
It might be that you're new to the sport. It might be that you lack confidence doing that, with this,
you literally you could just roll home. It might be that when you ride you're tight on time and you
can't afford to spend five minutes stuck around with a tubular at the side of the road, perhaps,
when you're commuting. It's cool that this tech benefits the pros and people that are
really new to the sport as well. Then I think most important of all is going to be this safety issue.
I know that a lot of people really worry about having blowouts and having these could potentially
remove the anxiety instantly. You've seen me riding them flat. There's nothing to worry about
anymore. I don't think. [music]
Air-Liners are sold individually or as part of a kit like this one. In it, you get
two Air-Liners. You also get a tool to help you take the Air-Liners off. You also get some
sealants and two valves which have got the air holes coming out sideways as well as out
the end. That helps you inflate and deflate the lesser it get blocked by sealant. Now what you
don't get our tires. That's fundamentally because you can use any tubeless tires with this setup.
They do have to be tubeless because as you probably worked out already the Air-Liner goes
where your inner tube goes. There are three sizes available. You've got small for 25 mil wide tires
in 21 mil wide rim beds. You've got medium for 28 in 23 mil wide rim beds and large for 30 mil tires
inside 26 mil rim beds. Yes, you didn't see that one coming. Did you?
Now weights are really light. It's just a piece of foam. Just 24 grams for a small,
31 grams for a medium, and 39 grams for a large. As I've been saying, the Air-Liner itself
is made of a foam polymer that doesn't absorb sealant. Your sealant is free to
move around the inside of the tire and do its job of potentially sealing small punctures.
Now one thing though is Vittoria do say that you should avoid using a sealant that has
ammonia in it. That's because the ammonia could potentially degrade the Air-Liner over time which,
of course, you don't want because once fitted this thing is just going to last and last,
otherwise. [music]
To fit Air-Liners it's just like putting an inner tubing to be quite honest albeit one that's
partially inflated. Once you then pump up your tires and you put your seal in, you get that nice
firm seal between tight and rim. What it does mean though is that when it comes to taking your tires
off, you require this little gizmo, which is a special tool that Vittoria have created. Now
it's not harder to mount and dismount per se, it's just a slightly different requirement,
different technique. Now the reason being that normally
when you're taking off a tubeless tire, you'd break the seal with your thumbs.
You pop the bead of the tire into the well of the rim which is the bed with the smallest diameter.
That gives you a little bit more slack to play with. Then you pop the tire off,
often with just your thumbs and away you go. Here though the Air-Liner sits in the well of the rim.
It's much harder to break that seal and then get the required slack, which is where this gizmo
comes in. As you can see, you can squish the tire, break the seal, and then you have these six little
clips. They sit inside the sidewall at the rim. That basically pushes the tire so that you get the
required slack to then pop it off. [music]
Now what that does mean is that it's not possible to stick an inner tubing in an emergency at the
roadside. Now, of course, you're running tubeless so the chances of punctures have decreased. You
can't get pinched flats anymore because there's no inner tube in there. The sealant will seal small
holes like those caused by thorns or broken glass. In fact, Vittoria say their sealant can seal up to
7 millimeter-long cuts which is pretty impressive. Every now and then, you do get flat with tubeless
that means you got to take a tire boot in and an inner tube. With this, you can't do
that. I think for super long epic rides where you can't limp home on a flat, then you probably need
to bear that in mind. When Vittoria first told us about this tech, I thought it seemed like a
really good idea. I'm interested to spend some more time on it. You've also got to say it's
a pretty inexpensive piece of tech as well. That full TLR kit that I've just showed you,
retails for either €80, £89, or $99. You can buy the Air-Liner is individually for between 30 to
40 euros, pounds, or dollars. Now of course it is just a piece of foam you might say, but it's more
than that. Isn't it? There's a lot of thought and a lot of energy and effort goes into making that.
Andreas Klier was telling us about the different prototypes they've been riding over the last year.
As price often is it's about more than just the cost of raw materials.
I shouldn't imagine that somehow you are going to be thinking, "Well, there's nothing wrong with
inner tubes." You're right, "There is nothing wrong with inner tubes." There's some pretty
compelling reasons to go tubeless now. You also can't argue with the safety factor at play here
as well. That also is very compelling indeed. I think there's something cool about tech
that's been adopted by pro cyclists, but yet, it's also really, really tailor-made for those
new to the sport as well. Do make sure you let us know in the comment section, what you think.
I'll be really interested to read your first impressions? Otherwise, please give this video
a big thumbs up if you've enjoyed it. [00:15:32] [END OF AUDIO]