VOLUME 57 ISSUE 6 FEBRUARY 11, 2020 P95
to overreach and end up with
performance characteristics that
did not fit the brief, yet radical in
other ways to achieve goals listed
above.
"So, yes, in many ways it's an
all-new tire," says Buckley, "and
in others not too far removed
from what we had before. It was a
balancing act, really. The old tire
wasn't broken, so why change
things completely? We improved
it where it needed improvement
and kept the strong-performing
elements."
One of those strong-perform-
ing elements was the DT3's
carcass, the tire's foundational
structure, which was in large part
carried over to the DT4.
"There's a lot of new thinking in
the DT4," says engineer Bell, "but
we wanted to keep some things
constant, things that worked well,
and the carcass design was one
of them. It makes sense, really,
because basically we used the
DT3 as a benchmark, a place to
start from and improve. The DT4
carcass is still a three-ply, bias
design, not a radial, but there
are a few changes, such as the
ply structure and ply layout in the
