World Champion Wout Van Aert is known to have a wide range of tubular tyres for a variety of conditions… remember back to #Bieles2017 where Wout used an old Green Michelin Mud tread on a Dugast carcass?
Yesterday in Zolder many of you eagle eyed viewers spotted an interesting tread pattern used by Wout, on what was an extremely fast and dry course compared to the used Mud of Zolder, our friends at Dugast let us into the story behind this interesting tyre choice from Van Aert…
@Cyclocrosss: So what was the combination Wout used today?
Dugast: “This is actually a Barum tread that we have glued on our casing on demand of Niels Albert.
Barum used to be a Czech producer of tubular tyres back in the eighties.
It is a pretty similar thing as the green Michelin treads: we can put these treads on a Dugast casing as long as the customer sends us the tread – and the tread needs to be in a good condition, which is not always the case after conserving it over 30 years”
This tread, more similar to a moto-cross style tread allowed a fast, yet grippy tyre, with good clearance for any mud picked up along the way, was it the perfect combination for today?
Do you do custom tubulars often, and for the general public?
“We did have lots of interest after last years worlds, We do this for every customer. Before we had the rhino tubulars we were producing a lot of these tubulars with Michelin tread on our casing. But since the rhino, we get much less requests to do this.”