Race tyre

Onza is a Swiss brand producing tyres mainly for commuters, BMX and mountain bikes, plus a few road options including this Preda folding clincher. It's a lightweight tyre with impressive performance and good puncture protection, making it ideal for summer training, sportives and entry-level racing.

The Preda also comes in a wire-beaded version, but we're testing a pair of the Kevlar-beaded folding ones here. They went onto a pair of Mavic Open Pros easily, but without being sloppy, and sat nicely on the rim when inflated.

Schwalbe's ZX versions of the popular Ultremo are competition tyres, they provide good grip and they're very, very fast.

Notice, though, that I described these as 'competition tyres', and Schwalbe do the same. The tread really isn't thick, hence a weight of just 190g per tyre on our test pair (even lower than Schwalbe's claimed 195g). The rubber doesn't wear away particularly fast, it's just that there's not much of it to start with, so if you're after longevity, these ain't the tyres for you.

If you're in the market for some Sunday-best racing rubber with a measure of puncture protection too the Specialized S-Works should be on your list, but if your performance tyres have to put a shift in during the week too then maybe you should look elsewhere. Specialized's S-Works Turbo tyres sit in one of the less populated bits of the company's vast cycling range, odd really because you'd expect the ubiquitous big 'S' to do more road rubber especially as they produce a fair range of well regarded mountainbike tyres.

The 'L' in Panaracer Race Type L is for 'light'. Panaracer bill this as a lightweight, high performance road tyre, and at a claimed 185g (191g on our scales) it lives up to its name. Lighter means less rubber and so more risk of punctures, though the suggested use is for short races such as hill climbs and TTs where puncturing is less likely.

The Evo 3 is Panaracer's top of the range road clincher and features PT, ZSG, BAX and All Contact Tread Shape, a sufficient amount of acronyms and buzz-words for such a high status tyre then.

Vittoria evo II

Vittoria evo

Crank Bros Speed Lever in action

Vittoria Evo rear

Colour coordinated Teenage Dream