Support element designed to be fitted to a rim inside a vehicle tire, for supporting the tread of this tire in the event of loss of inflation pressure, including a base, a cover and an annular body in which each supporting partition of the annular body is in the form of an oblique parallelepiped with two circumferentially oriented outer faces arranged on either side of said support element and two faces inclined relative to the circumferential direction by an angle α, two adjacent supporting partitions form a V-shaped pattern, and, at the base of the V, two adjacent supporting partitions are separated by a narrow axial slit extending radially through the whole of the annular body.