I figure I give my view on road tires.....first off a little about my bicycle experience:

I started riding very early in life.  My parents are long time bicycle riders (and they still do 30-40 miles a day in their mid 70's age).  They have a mix of E-Bikes, Road bikes, Mountain bikes and even a tandem.  In fact my father just upgraded his E-Bike to a Canyon Grail:On this week.

With this strong bicycling parents I was doing road riding all over the Seattle area since I was too young for a drivers license.   After I got out of HS and started college I got my racing license in 1987 and had 3-4 years a hard CAT 4 and CAT 3 racing all around Washington and Oregon while also working at bicycle shops around town.  After college I had to join the real world....a job so my racing and riding took a back seat for many years.  After a few years I races some again around 2005-2007 in the Austin area but stopped again after a major sprint wreck at Pace Bend Park (separated clavicle...fun fun).  Then a few years I got the bug yet again and I started racing yet again in 2019 with Violet Crown in Austin.  Since then I have moved back up to CAT 3 and been racing about 25 races a year (this year not as much due to foot issues)

I ride about 10-12k road miles a year and I am a CAT 3 racer on Violet Crown Racing Team and Fort Bend KIA Racing Team ( I know the owner so he lets me race under them sometimes).  I ride on the road nearly 99% of my time....I have a gravel and mountain bike that gets maybe 2 miles of usage each year from me....  As for road I have two "current" race bikes.  My road/training bike is a Quintana Roo SR5 (R8000 DI2, disc) which has been great.  I using it for most of my training miles on a set of cheap DT swiss 470 wheels and for faster training or road racing I swap to HED Vanquish RC Pros (they are fast as F*ck).  For my criteriums I race with a "cheaper" bike since wrecks happen.   I have a rim brake KHS Team carbon with "old school" R8000 mech and Mercury carbon rims.  This year I just converted my crit bike to the 1X since I am tired of the front mech dropping down to the small ring right at the wrong time (Tulsa Tough and State championship race this year it got me).  I went 1X since I have noticed in 99.9% of my crits I am always in the big ring so that is what I did.

With all this you can see I might have ridden a few road tires.  I have first have riding/race experience with:
Continental GP4k, GP5k, GP5kTL, GP4seasons
Pirelli P zero race
Vittoria tires...from 4 years ago.

I do a mix of tube and tubeless tires on my setup.  Currently my DT Swiss wheels are American Classic Torchbearer 32c tubeless, HED are GP5k with ridenow TPU tubes, Mercury wheels are American Classic Timekeeper 28c tubeless.

With that all said I am tired (pun) of tire prices...which has been the reason I have been riding American Classic road tires.  They are 1/2 the cost AND you can get replacement tire at 1/2 price!.  Yes when you finally kill the tire let them know and you get a 1/2 code.  I have done that 3 times so far with great success.

Now time for my thoughts on the two American Classic tires I ride on:

Torchbearer:

Torchbearer is my training tire.  I have had great success with many hard road miles on it with your standard punctures here and there.  I have used both tubed and now tubeless with more times getting nearly 3k of miles on the rear (unless it is destroyed by FOD).  I have once even worn my rear tire to the casing without any punctures...
The tires to roll a little slower than your GP5k I would say they roll very much like the GP4 seasons tire.  They corner very well and would have no issues doing a crit with these (well besides the slowness).  They do run one size smaller so 25c is 23c, 28c is 25c and 32c is 28c when compared to Continental (which seems to be the standard to use).
Overall this is now for the last two seasons the go to tire for training.     Oh there is a new model of the Torchbearer that is even cheaper called "People for bike" and I have no experience with it.  From what I can see it has less tpi on the casing so it may feel just a little slower yet IMHO.

TimeKeeper:

The TimeKeeper has become my criterium racing tire for now.  I had GP5K TL tires on my KHS up to this Spring and finally wore them out.   I wanted to keep going tubeless but the TL are a bitch to mounts and well....GPXXX just cost so much.  By now I have already been riding Torchbearers for thousands of miles so I figure try the TimeKeeper out.
I went with 28c tubeless and have been very happy with them.  I only race on these tire so I really can't say just have puncture resistance they are (since most crits are "clean roads") but zero issues in that department.  They corner very well just as good as my GP5k's...if not better.   I have noticed they seem more smooth to the feel on pavement seams and hard corners.  I have not used them much in the rain but I did warm up with them in the rain at Tulsa Tough and they seemed to stick well.  Just like the Torchbearer they run small so I got the 28c (the largest they make in this model right now) to give me 25c in size.  If they come out with 32c I might go for those.

As a whole I really think that American Classic road tires are a good to go at the price they are at.   Sure GP5k's might be 1% fast and such....but at nearly 2x the cost I will stay with American Classic.

Let me know what you think and any questions let me know.

Thanks

I’ve been looking at tires upgrades for my new trek dual sport and was wondering if those American Classics were any good.
They are inexpensive.