Selle San Marco Presa Corsa Team Iridescent Handlebar Tape

The Selle San Marco Presa Corsa Team Iridescent bar tape will give you that most coveted of things: perfect coordination. Assuming you have its Shortfit Racing Iridescent Saddle, anyway. It's a spectacular colour – purple in most lights, heading towards orange in others – but with very little padding and only mediocre grip for £44.99, it's one for hardcases with deep pockets.

Selle San Marco is primarily a manufacturer of saddles, but it also makes bar tape, although not a vast range. The Presa Corsa Team tape is now available as part of its Iridescent collection.

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This tape is spartan – it's a good few years since I used any with so little padding. If you like a good firm connection and to feel every detail beneath your tyres, this could be for you. If your local tarmac is less than perfect, however, either avoid it or wear well-padded gloves.

Grip when wet or dry is acceptable, but certainly not class-leading – there's none of the tack that clings to your hands of some other premium tapes.

Fitting

The Team Iridescent tape has an almost synthetic-leather feel to it, with very little stretch. It takes more than average tension to get a good, even wrap of the bar, but it's plenty strong and you can pull quite hard without any danger of it tearing.

It uses conventional adhesive tape rather than the tacky silicone more common on high-end tapes, so there's limited scope for adjustment if you get it wrong. Nevertheless, I was pretty happy with the finish having applied it.

The finishing touches are the most basic plastic push-in plugs and... no finishing tape. I was a bit bewildered by this, especially when high-end tapes from the likes of Silca and Supacaz come with quality, expanding aluminium plugs at lower prices.

What price iridescence?

So we asked the distributor if the price was correct, and if so why it was so expensive, and were given these reasons by Selle San Marco:

- Iridescent is a particular color option and the bar tape is made with a particular material that is a little bit more expensive.

- The Iridescent Bar Tape is an exclusive product to evaluate, with the Iridescent saddle, the bike and to make it very particular 

- We created the the Presa Corsa Iridescent with a very resistant and elastic material which is the best standard on the market

It's certainly a lot more than the standard Presa Corsa Team tape, which is £19.99.

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To be clear, other manufacturers put a premium on iridescent versions too. Specialized's S-Wrap HD tape costs £45 in its disco incarnation, or £15 extra over its cheaper colourway. It's excellent, if not especially durable.

Overall

The Presa Corsa Team Iridescent bar tape looks posh, but it's very uncomfortable by modern standards and lacks the fantastic grip of many premium rivals. It's also more than twice the price of the standard version, yet offers only basic bar plugs, and doesn't include any finishing tape at all. Its beauty is only skin deep, sadly, while its performance is a big disappointment.

Verdict

Gorgeous looking bar tape with almost no padding, unimpressive grip and a dizzying price