(Image credit: Will Jones)

At the start of Paris-Roubaix this year, my colleague Will Jones spotted a Newmen 'Streem S.66' wheel on Team TotalEnergies' Cube bikes and included it in our Paris-Roubaix men's tech gallery .

The wheel in question was part of a wheelset which uses a 66mm deep rear wheel, and a 60mm front.

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We followed it up post-Roubaix to see how the team could legally use a wheel that's over the stipulated limit, and found that the UCI rule allows a 1mm tolerance to account for the "thickness of surface coatings (paint and sponsors’ logos)."

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What does the UCI rule say?

In the Clarification guide of the UCI technical regulation, on maximum rim depth, Article 1.3.018 states:

'The maximum height of the rim does not measure more than 65 mm (measured as the perpendicular distance from the tangential line passing through any point of the outer extremity of the rim to…