Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport R

The Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport R is a tyre for those of us for whom speed and grip are our highest priorities. With a super-supple compound, they are grippy and comfortable and roll very well indeed. Going lightweight often means a compromise when it comes to durability, but I haven't found that an issue with these, even after rides on wet and detritus-strewn British roads.

Looking for new rubber? Check out our best road bike tyres buyer's guide.

Emily recently tested the Goodyear Eagle F1 R tyre and was very impressed. These SuperSport offerings take the performance up a notch, which is mostly down to coming in at a lower weight and having an increased thread count in the casing, which should give you more feedback and greater suppleness than the F1 R's lower count.

Both tyres share Goodyear's all-new Dynamic: UHP compound, which has a tacky feel to it out of the box and you know straightaway it is going to grip very well. And it does too, with a reassuring connection to the road surface that gives you confidence to chuck your bike into bends at speed and not feel that dreaded sensation of your tyres scrabbling for bite as you lean the bike over

Video: Learn the easy way to change a tubeless tyre

Side by side against the Continental GP 5000, which I regard to be one of the best race tyres on the market, the Goodyears perform very well, although they just come up a tiny bit short across the board against the GP5000s.

That said, I am talking pretty minimal margins. In isolation I'd say that the Eagle F1 SuperSport R is a very capable tyre and probably all the rubber you are ever going to want whether it comes to racing or just riding fast.

They grip very well in the dry and I have no qualms with using them with confidence in the wet too – and considering how wet July has been the Goodyears have seen plenty of rain. That's tested the durability too, and even with all sorts of road grit being washed out into the road the tyres have stayed pleasingly free of punctures.

The treads have picked up a couple of nicks over the last couple of months though, so they aren't the type of tyre I'd run all-year-round. This is more a tyre to keep for race day and predominantly dry conditions.

At 264g this 28mm option is relatively light too. It's only 10 to 20 grams lighter than the competitors so it's not like you'll feel the difference, but they feel light enough to aid acceleration and climbing.

The 150TPI (threads per inch) casing isn't anywhere near as high as you'll find on something like an open tubular tyre, where the thread count can reach as high as 320TPI, but the Goodyears do still respond well to the bumps and variations you'll find on the road surface, which means they feel comfortable even when I'm riding them at my preferred high pressures.

Performance aside, I found the SuperSport an easy tyre to live with – they're easy to fit and to set up tubeless. All they took was a bit of help from some tyre levers the first time I fitted them and they seated easily. The tubeless version is available in 25, 28 and 30mm widths and the clincher version, shown below, is available in 25 and 28mm widths. Both the tubeless and clincher tyres are available with black or tan sidewalls.

Thanks to an inner liner the tubeless tyres' sidewalls aren't porous, so once seated they maintained pressure from the off.

After they had been on the rims for around six weeks, they were also easy to remove, which gives me confidence that should you have a non-sealing puncture out in the wild, it wouldn't be an issue to whip the tyre off and fix it or fit an inner tube.

Value

As for price, while they aren't necessarily cheap, they aren't as expensive as their main rivals.

Those Continental GP 5000 S TR tyres that I mentioned earlier were £69.95 when Jamie reviewed them a couple of years ago and they're now £79.95 each. That's nearly forty quid a pair more expensive than the Goodyears.

Pirelli's P-Zero Race TLRs are also nearly £80 and at 305g are about 40g heavier than the SuperSports. I found their grip awesome and their feel very supple, but they're also nearly £80 and at 305g are about 40g heavier than the SuperSports.

The Michelin Power Cups are a slightly more reasonable £69.99, weigh much the same as the Goodyear and George was very, very impressed with them.

Conclusion

While the Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport R isn't necessarily the fastest, grippiest tyre out there – in my opinion it's very, very close indeed. The fact they're forty quid a pair cheaper than the GP5000s offsets that, as you're getting virtually all the performance at a price that won't require a meeting with the bank manager first when they need replacing.

Verdict

Impressive grip and overall performance – for a lot less than some of the competition