What happens when a Tour de France rider punctures? From wheel and bike swaps to neutral support, here's how pros get back on the road in rapid time

The Tour de France is one of the most gruelling and prestigious cycling races in the world, and although race organisers do their best to make the riding conditions as good as they can get for the riders, punctures are still inevitable.

With riders covering around 3,500 kilometres across varied and challenging terrain, punctures happen, and often at the worst possible times. But unlike us, the pros don't carry a full puncture repair kit in their back pocket – instead, they mostly rely on their team support to get them back riding again. So how do the teams and riders deal with punctures, then? In this article, we delve into all the tips and tricks the pro teams use for getting riders back on the road again rapidly... 

Before we get to how a puncture is dealt with at the Tour today, let's just say what happens now isn't how things have always been. In the early days of the Tour de France, riders had to carry their own spare tyres and tools, much like they also took care of their own nutrition, stopping by the roadside to fix punctures. There were no support vehicles, and the rudimentary equipment made repairs a time-consuming and labour-intensive process, which meant that a puncture could've ruined a rider's whole race.

> Hooked vs hookless wheels at the Tour de France

It could be said those early Tours more closely resembled a self-supported ultra-race, and it's not really clear exactly when the shift to support cars took place – but likely around the 1930s.

Neutral support cars first made an appearance in 1972, and since then the army of team cars, professional mechanics and improved tyre technology has dramatically changed how punctures are handled, reducing the time lost and keeping riders in the race.

How pros deal with punctures – team support

In the modern Tour de France, punctures are something the rider doesn't really have to deal with themselves after signalling to their team that they have a flat. In the case of a puncture, the rider will put their hand up, use the team radio to communicate to the car what's happened, and then start drifting to the back of the bunch. 

Hopefully, by the time the rider has dropped to the back, the race director’s car will have called the team car forward so the rider can keep riding (or attempting to ride) on the flat tyre until the team car is right there.

What follows is almost an F1-style pit stop wheel change. There is no time to pull out a patch and glue and start repairing the tyre or tube; instead, the rider will immediately be given a new wheel. 

Before disc brakes took over the peloton, race bikes were equipped with quick-release axles that made wheel swaps rather speedy (as you can see in the below video). The rider could even take the wheel off themselves while waiting for the mechanic, because no tools are required. It was also easier to slot the wheel back on without worrying about disc rotor alignment. 

But now that thru-axles and disc brakes rule the peloton, pretty much all modern high-end road bikes will have thru-axles that require an Allen key to remove them. Entry-level disc brake bikes and older models may still have flip levers on the thru-axles that don't require a hex key, but aerodynamics, clean looks and all that... 

Anyway, pro mechanics have adapted by using cordless impact drivers fitted with the right size Allen key bit for speedy disc brake wheel swaps. The impact driver is much like a smaller version of the tool used in a Formula 1 wheel change, or by the mechanic at your local car garage. It unscrews the thru-axle in a blink of an eye, and once the new wheel is slotted in, it stops tightening at a pre-set torque. The rider has a new wheel to ride on, so they get a generous push from the mechanic to catch back onto the peloton. 

 

 

 

 

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It goes without saying that teams also spend time 'training' for puncture scenarios, especially the mechanics who need to drill on rapid wheel changes. 

But what if there's no team car nearby? 

Team cars follow closely behind the peloton, and are equipped with spare wheels, bikes, and a team of mechanics ready to spring into action. But sometimes, it might be they cannot get to the rider with a puncture quick enough, and that's when the team might decide to sacrifice, so to say, one of the support riders (known as domestiques) to get the team leader rolling again. 

The domestique may give their wheel or bike to the team leader, sacrificing their own race for the benefit of the team, and be left waiting on the side of the road for a replacement bike for themselves. 

Though with that said, we have seen cases where the pros have no other option but to dismount and run to ensure they're not losing time. Just like Chris Froome did in 2016, ditching his crashed bike and running up Mont Ventoux to defend his yellow jersey…

And if there's no team car nearby, then Shimano's neutral service car can also help with a spare wheel or a bike. You might also spot people who look like spectators holding up wheels on the side of the road.

There have been instances where a pro has won on a borrowed wheel, but with thru-axles it's a lot more difficult for the riders to swap a wheel without a mechanic, as the riders themselves don't carry tools with them. 

Choice of tyres

It's obvious that top-level racing requires fast tyres, and at times those might not offer the best puncture protection. Tyre technologies are getting a lot better, though, and even the best road bike tyres now offer more than just low rolling resistance. 

Most teams of the pro peloton are now using tubeless tyres, which have now almost completely replaced tubular tyres in the peloton as the most popular tyre type at the time of writing.

Though some would still argue tubular tyres are safer because they don't roll off the rim even when flat, because they are glued onto the rim, they are also challenging to change. Tyre inserts will also counteract this problem with tubeless tyres, narrowing their downsides to very few.  

> Why wider tyres on road bikes are here to stay

Standard clincher tyres, on the other hand, use an inner tube and are easier to change, but often heavier. Tubeless tyres, which don’t require an inner tube and can – hopefully – self-seal small punctures with sealant, are therefore a good compromise. When paired with tyre inserts, they can be ridden even with a flat tyre for a short period of time (if the tyre doesn't blow off the rim, but that's a whole other story).

What happens to the punctured tyres? 

It's likely that many of the punctured tyres won't make it back to the peloton, but instead, the team mechanics take the wheel back to the team truck and replace the tyre with a new one. At pro races no unnecessary risks are taken, and if a tyre has a defect, it certainly won't be making it back onto the roads of France. 

Back in the day (ok, around three or four years ago at the time of writing) rest days for the riders would be anything but for team mechanics, who would undoubtedly spend a good proportion of the day glueing tyres onto rims. Wheels with punctured tyres attached from the previous day would be inspected, and if in good condition a new coat of glue would be applied with a fresh tubular tyre. Otherwise, the rim bed would be stripped back to the carbon before fresh glue layers are applied.

RIP tubs

With tubeless tyres, any punctured ones will also be replaced with no exceptions. When the rim is free of the punctured/defective tyre, the mechanic will generally clean off any old sealant. With a new tyre on and fresh sealant installed, the wheel is ready to be used again. Whether the team mechanics generally prefer working on tubeless or hark back to the good old days of tubs is not something we're too sure about, but we've got a mix of opinions when asking in the past.

With pro teams getting rid of tyres that have even the slightest nick on them, surely it would be a great idea to make a booze cruise-style trip over to France, find where the pro team trucks are located and stock up on a load of lightly-soiled pro tyres? Not so unfortunately, as it's likely the used tyres will be slashed so they cannot be used by anyone who might come across them after they've been binned; we even witnessed this at a Jumbo-Visma mechanics' truck during a previous edition of the Tour of Britain. Well, we're not here to talk about the sustainability of Tour de France puncture repair practices after all...