Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127698
Dunlop tire test ----------------~---------- By Henny Ray Abrams DA¥rONA BEACH, FL, DEC. 1-3 f it is your desire to wa tch some of th e m ost talented road ra cers destroy tires, the re are few better places than the normally forbidden area outs ide of tum one of Dayton a Internat ional Speedway during a lire test. This is one of the pla ces wh er e the riders push the tires to their lim its, s pi n ni ng, sli di ng, a n d s moki ng - all thin gs tha t would ru in the ir chances in the race, but which a re vital to ge tt ing feedback from the batch of experime ntal tires they ' re testing. We were her e last year for the Dunl op test and came aw ay wi th a renewed a pp recia tio n for Scott Russell's ability to ge t the most out of a tire. This year was no different. As he had last yea r, exiting tum one, Russell wou ld ligh t up the rea r slick on his Muzzy Kawasaki, a black arc on the pavem ent his signa tu re, a quick lap time his objective. On the first day, the track is d irty, cove red with a thin layer of san d that sprays off the rear tire. Russell goe s too far an d ge ts kicked ou t of the sa d d le, quickly settlin g d own for th e rest of the lap. The next time, he does it again, and aga in is bri efly sent airborne. He is at the limit for this tire. Time for a new one. "For me, I just go ou t on ea ch ti re and try to go as fast as I can, becau se I thi nk it's importa n t th a t they ge t th e highes t temperature reading tha t I can make it read, and then they can go off of that," Russell says. "I try to go as fast as I can and sp in the thing up as much as I can , but I won' t ride the race like that. When you get in to testing we run them like that and if they' re going to have a problem we 're more apt to find that ou t spinni ng them off every comer then yo u wo uld if yo u we ren't. Sometimes I put a tire on and yo u can tell a big d ifference and so meti mes yo u can't. When the construction is hard er you can feel the road more. It' s like you have more of a sp ring on the bike - that's wha t it kind of feels li ke . As fa r as tellin g th e d iffer en ce (Above) Colin Edwards II slides his Yamaha VZF750 Superbike at Daytona International Speedway during the recent Dunlop tire tests. (Left ) Muzzy Kawasaki's Scott Russell was the fastest of the superbike men at Daytona, clicking off ti mes in the , :SD-range. A B ~ 36 between the com po unds, that's simp le, it eithe r grips or it doesn 't. " That mean t going th rou gh th e 12 ne w fro nt a nd 29 new rea r slic ks that Dunlop b rough t to the three-d ay test . They also had five new DOT fronts and 19 rea rs for the Supersport b ikes that Russell also tested , along with severa l othe r rid ers. Not su rp risi ng ly, Russell had the fastest times in both Superb ike and Supersport. His bes t Superbike time was a 1:50.62, not quite at the 1994 pole position , but he w as ab le to ree l off a s t ri n g o f SI s wh en e ver h e w a nte d, something that would guarantee a race win if the tires held up. More impressive was that h e d id it while testin g s teel brakes in plac e of the ou tlawed- for-I995 carbons. The extra weight cau sed Russell to stru ggle in the chicane, normally one of his strongest sections. The d ifference between th is year's