Battle of the brands: Who won with what at the 2025 Tour de France?

There we have it, another year over, another men's Tour de France done, and there's a lot to unpack.

I'll leave the race analysis for my esteemed colleagues, but here, I'm going to dig into the tech. I will analyse who won with what, which brands were the biggest winners and losers, and try to spot any trends that emerged along the way.

The age-old saying of "what wins on Sunday sells on Monday" will always apply, and although Tadej Pogačar dominated, there is plenty for a multitude of brands to celebrate in the aftermath.

Cycling is often described as a cruel sport in which a single person walks away victorious with everyone else left licking their wounds, but in a race as big as the Tour de France, that's not totally true. The Slovenian World Champion took the King of the Mountain classification and four stages on his way to his fourth overall victory in Paris, but he's not the only one who will leave with his head held high.

Lidl Trek's Jonathan Milan, for example, will leave with two stage wins under his belt, enough to claim the green jersey for the Sprinters' Classification, and a celebratory green Trek Madone for the final few stages.

Meanwhile, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's young German, Florian Lipowitz, leaves Paris in the white jersey of the Young Riders' classification and a commemorative white Tarmac SL8 from his Red Bull Bora-Hansgrohe team sponsor, Specialized. Even Oscar Onley, whose fourth place and zero stage wins leave him empty-handed in terms of silverware, is being lauded as a hero by his sponsor Lapierre before the dust has even settled.

Fifteen different riders claimed a stage between the grand départ in Lille and the Champs Élysées; their wins spread out among nine different bike brands, nine wheel brands, five tyre brands, and two groupset brands.

And while we're overtly aware that it's the rider who deserves the credit for their endeavours, here, we're going to unpack the winners and losers from the tech side. Which bike brand has bagged the most bragging rights? Can Shimano or SRAM claim to be the winningest groupset? And are there any brands that'll be looking to forget the 2025 Tour de France as soon as possible?

Stage-by-stage breakdown: Who won with what?

Bike brands: Who gets the bragging rights?

For once, Colnago's victories don't all come thanks to Pogačar. He did claim four of them, but Tim Wellens came through with the fifth.

Canyon will be happy with its Tour, not least for the three stage wins but also thanks to Philipsen and Van der Poel spending much of the first week in yellow. Cannondale too, thanks to Ben Healy's endeavours, and Trek for Milan's success, coupled with Quinn Simmons' relentless pursuit of breakaway victory, despite not being able to make it stick.

There are plenty of brands without a victory to shout about, too. French brands Look, Lapierre and Van Rysel will all feel a missed opportunity in their home race, but Look might simply be relieved to have its bikes back after they were stolen during the opening weekend.

Aero bikes burst the weightweenie bubble

The most notable trend of 2025, besides the peloton's penchant for cherry juice and nose strips, was that the aero bike is well and truly back.

For all but one of the stages in which the winning rider had a choice of an aero bike or a lightweight bike, it was the aero bike that was used.

Ignoring the stage 5 time trial, of the remaining 20 stages, 12 were won on a dedicated aero bike, while eight were won using an 'aero all-rounder'. However, of those eight, two were won by Lidl-Trek, who only have the all-rounder Trek Madone Gen 8; three were won by Soudal-QuickStep who only have the Tarmac SL8, and two were won by Ineos Grenadiers, who only have the Pinarello Dogma F.

The remaining win came courtesy of Ben Healy, on the Cannondale SuperSix Evo, though it's not clear if he even had the more aero SystemSix at his disposal.

Perhaps more important than all that, though, is that Tadej Pogačar (who has the aero Colnago Y1Rs and the lightweight V5Rs) and Jonas Vingegaard (who has the aero Cervélo S5 and the lightweight R5) both opted for their aero bikes on the highest mountain stages.

Given that Pogačar's Y1Rs can reportedly hit 6.9kg and Vingegaard's S5 similar, there's very little benefit for switching to the lightweight machine, given Tour de France bikes are limited to a minimum 6.8kg anyway.

Groupset wars: Shimano vs SRAM

With Cofidis the only team to sport a Campagnolo groupset, it's perhaps not the biggest surprise that the 2025 spoils were shared by the other big road bike groupset manufacturers, Shimano and SRAM.

SRAM came away with four stages, thanks in equal measure to Lidl-Trek and Visma-Lease a Bike, as well as two jerseys courtesy of Jonathan Milan and Florian Lipowitz. Amusingly, Pogačar matched that tally all by himself, while 11 other riders contributed to the Japanese brand's total of 17 stages.

What's ubiquitous nowadays, though, is the use of disc brakes. Previous years' iterations of this article have had me counting up the win tally for disc brakes vs rim brakes. This year, like last year, it's a score of 21-0. Of course, it's a win by default, as every single team has switched to discs.

The wheels of (no) change

The table of winningest wheels perfectly reflects that of the bike brands above, so in the same way UAE-Team Emirates' sponsor, Colnago, claimed the top spot among the bike brands, their wheel brand Enve has the bragging rights here.

Elsewhere, Alpecin-Deceuninck's three wins on Canyon bikes were all with Shimano wheels. Thymen Arensman's brace for Pinarello benefited Princeton Carbonworks, while the four Soudal-QuickStep wins landed Specialized-subsidiary Roval four wins.

The transition away from tubular wheels is well documented and quite complete by now, and while we can't rule out the odd spare tub knocking about in mechanics' trucks, we're confident in saying none of the 184 riders started a stage this year using tubular wheels.

Continental's crown and a tubeless takeover

In the tyre space, the spoils were shared by five different brands, with Continental, Pirelli, Specialized, Vittoria and Cadex each enjoying a stage win.

However, the bragging rights go to Continental, who took eight of the 21 stages (and, of course, the yellow jersey). Alpecin and Lidl-Trek contributed five for Pirelli, Soudal-QuickStep bagged all of Specialized's, while Vittoria's three wins came courtesy of Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost), and both Simon Yates and Wout van Aert (both Visma-Lease a Bike). Ben O'Connor's mountain-top victory claims a first-ever Tour stage on Cadex tyres.

Most notably, though, 2025 is the first year in which every single stage was won using tubeless tyres.

Amid the transition away from tubulars, most teams have switched to tubeless but a few have preferred inner tubes. Pirelli-sponsored teams have regularly used the TPU Pirelli Smartube Evo, while Specialized-sponsored teams have used the Turbo Cotton with latex tubes inside.

While those two options were still in irregular use in 2025, the stage winners all came from tubeless setups.

Two-by or not two-by?

One-by (or 1x) chainsets certainly made a showing at this year's Tour, with a time trial win beneath Remco Evenepoel, Jonathan Milan's double, and Wout van Aert's crowd-pleasing finale, but the remaining 17 stages were swept up by 2x chainsets.

SRAM has been the proponent of 1x chainsets, and although three of its wins came on the single-ring solution, Simon Yates took to 2x for his mountain win on stage 10.

All but one of Shimano's stages came using a double chainset. The only one that didn't was courtesy of Evenepoel's monster 68T chainring.