Zipp Super-9 Track Tubeless Disc Wheel Front

The Zipp Super-9 Track Tubeless Disc Wheel Front traces its lineage directly to the beginning of Zipp as a company — the disc wheel was their first product, and it remains one of their most studied. Decades of wind tunnel testing, velodrome feedback, and carbon laminate refinement have produced a front disc that does exactly what a track wheel must: eliminate aerodynamic drag, hold a line, and transfer every watt from your legs to the boards without compromise. This is not a wheel you adapt your riding to — it is a wheel built to respond to the way you already ride hard.

On the track, aerodynamics are not abstract. Every tenth of a second is the product of choices made long before the gun goes off — your line, your position, your equipment. A front disc wheel changes the aerodynamic profile of the entire front end of the bike. Rather than the turbulent air interaction of a spoked wheel, a solid carbon surface presents a clean, unbroken plane to the oncoming air. The Super-9 is built around a stiff carbon laminate optimized for 23mm tires, which keeps the aerodynamic profile consistent and predictable at race speeds.

What separates this wheel from older disc designs is the tubeless compatibility. Running a tubeless setup on the track allows you to run lower pressures without the risk of pinch flats — delivering a small but meaningful compliance benefit that can take the edge off a rough track surface without softening the power transfer you need. It also removes the inner tube as a variable, reducing the chance of a mechanical at the worst possible moment. In a discipline where margins are measured in hundredths, that reliability matters.

Design Benefits

1. Aerodynamic Disc Profile: A solid carbon surface eliminates the turbulence created by spoked wheels, presenting a clean face to oncoming air across the full diameter of the wheel. At track racing speeds, this translates directly into lower aerodynamic drag — which means more of your power goes into forward motion rather than fighting wind resistance.
2. Stiff Carbon Laminate for Direct Power Transfer: The carbon layup is engineered for stiffness, not just lightness. Lateral rigidity in the front wheel ensures that steering input is precise and immediate, and that the wheel holds its line through corners without flex-induced wandering — a critical trait in high-speed velodrome riding where contact patches are small and confidence in the front end is non-negotiable.
3. Tubeless-Ready Construction: Tubeless compatibility on a track disc wheel is a deliberate design choice, not a checkbox feature. Without an inner tube, you eliminate a potential failure point and gain the ability to dial in tire pressure with more precision. Running tubeless also allows a small reduction in pressure that can improve grip on polished wooden or concrete track surfaces without sacrificing the snappy, responsive feel a sprinter or pursuer demands.
4. Optimized for 23mm Tires: The wheel's aerodynamic geometry is designed around a 23mm tire profile, which remains the standard in track racing. This optimization means the transition between tire and disc is as smooth as possible, reducing the aerodynamic penalty that comes when wheel and tire profiles don't align — a detail that becomes significant at the speeds where track racers operate.
5. Velodrome-Tested Development: Zipp's disc wheel development has always paired wind tunnel data with real-world velodrome testing. The Super-9 is built on that foundation — validated not just against computational models but against actual race conditions and competing equipment, ensuring that the performance claims hold up where it counts.

Final Take

The Zipp Super-9 Track Tubeless Disc Wheel Front is built for serious track racers — pursuers, sprinters, and omnium competitors — who want a front disc that has been refined over decades of genuine racing and development. It is a wheel for riders who understand that the front end is as important as the rear in the aerodynamic equation, and who want the added reliability and setup flexibility that tubeless construction brings to the velodrome. Zipp built the disc wheel before almost anyone else. The Super-9 reflects how much they have learned since.