Cyclingnews Verdict

If you're looking for a tough, tenacious all-rounder at a reasonable price that doesn't skimp in the grip, protection and reliability departments, then Panaracer’s Race A Evo 4 tyres are worth a look

Pros

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Tacky traction
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Impressive puncture/cut protection
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Low weight
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Reasonable price

Cons

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‘Race’ name undersells its tough all-rounder strengths
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Undersized
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Be careful of tight clearance setups in the first few miles

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Panaracer upped the puncture protection of its Race A tyres with the Evo 3 version. The Evo 4 features the same tough carcass with a new rubber compound that’s said to be faster and grippier. It also introduces a tubeless option to the range. We tested the standard tubed tyre in increasingly popular 28mm size alongside the best of the rest in both ‘Race’ and ‘Endurance’ categories to see if it's worthy of inclusion in our guide to the best road bike tyres.

Construction and fitting

The handmade Evos come flat-packed but they soon pop into a curved, easier-to-fit shape. They’re baggy enough to mount onto a tubeless-ready rim without levers, too. While we’ve not tried this specific tyre in a tubeless tyre version, the last TLC versions we tried from Panaracer fitted far more easily than the first generation tubeless tyres which were extremely hard to wrestle onto a rim. Considering the protection levels, it’s a lightweight tyre too, although the 28mm carcass size did come up closer to a big 25mm at 80psi.

Panaracer’s Zero Slip Grip dual compound has always been one of the stickiest on the road, but the first kilometre on the Race A still made us laugh at how tacky the tyres were. Even on a just-above-frost-point morning, not only did they sound like hot blue tack, but they picked up every bit of grit going like a lint roller and fired a fair amount of it straight at our frame tubes. They get less audible and grabby after about 10km but that’s still enough distance to do some damage if you’re running very close frame or mudguard clearances.

Obviously the undersized nature of the tyres alleviates this a bit but it doesn’t do a lot for ride quality. The Race Evos aren’t painful or wooden, but they definitely aren’t floated, buoyant, creamy or any of the other words we’ve been throwing about describing other 28mm ‘Race’ tyres recently. You can take ‘rough road speed sustain’ off the cliche clipboard too, as you’ll definitely be looking for the smooth tarmac on these tyres where possible. The audible and tangible stickiness of the tread is backed up by power meter readings that showed we were consistently working harder than normal, even after the initial super stickiness had subsided.

As you might expect, the grip through corners, whether going up cold, green, greasy under-tree climbs or braking hard, is absolutely outstanding. There is a slight lunge as the tyre falls onto the flatter sides of the peaked profile, but you’ll only notice it if you’re specifically looking for it. Even then it’s subtle enough that we might just be imagining it because we think it should be there. Either way, it doesn’t do anything obviously weird to the handling of the bike and the tyres stick to corners like chewing gum in hair.