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/1513380
P162 PRODUCT REVIEWI List Price: Starting at $249.49 for a 120/70 ZR17 front and $302.19 for a 180/55 ZR17 rear. Final prices are yet to be determined for the U.S. market. Website: https://www.bridgestone.com/products/motorcycle_tires/products/ STANDOUT FEATURE Increased cornering speed matched to excellent stability on the side of the front tire. RIDER ANALYSIS Testing street tires on the racetrack is always interesting. You don't want to push too hard because you know there's not going to be the final level of grip you'd expect from a racing tire. However, push too little, and you're not going to experience the difference to the old tire. Speaking of which, I loved the S22 when it came out in 2019. The turn-on moment for me was when chasing my colleague Adam Waheed around the iconic Jerez circuit in Spain and burying the front end so hard I was convinced I was going to second-gear, 90° right-hander that starts going uphill to the pit entry. Both corners are real front-end tes- ters, the first at high speed and the second at low speed. I've always been a front-end-feel rider. The back can almost do what it wants, but as long as I know where the front tire is, I'm good. Heading into the Mineshaft, I had the con- fidence to push harder and harder each lap across a wide variety of machines, from KTM's 890 SMT and Duke R to bigger steeds like the BMW S 1000 R, KTM 1290 Super Duke R and the Yamaha YZF-R1. The entry into the right-hander is serious heavy-braking territory, and you transition from left to right while gradually squeezing the lever harder and harder. Here, the speed of direc- tion was an improvement over the S22, while the reduced flex at lean of- fered more feel at the handlebars. Bridgestone's rear S23 offered excellent acceleration, but the heat of Kyalami (it's the southern hemisphere, so it's summer down there now) meant grip levels tapered off after about five Groove technology in the tread design, which concentrates the water into the center of the groove. In basic terms, it speeds up the water disper- sion to get it out of the way and allow the part of the tire void of the grooves to do its job and stick to the road. To test out the new S23, we headed to the fantastic Kyalami circuit just out of Johannesburg in South Africa. Bridgestone had about 60 riders in atten - dance, and each bike was only given one set of S23s, so each bike did well over 100 laps for a set of tires, and there was not a tire warmer in sight. crash, but still came out the other side unscathed. Pretty damn good for a street tire, I thought. The second point where I realized they were such a good tire was on the 2020 1290 Super Duke R launch where I was in the last group and had to take the handlebars of a KTM that had done over 130 laps of the undulating Portimao circuit with no new rubber forthcoming. Yes, grip was a bit on the low side, but nothing like you'd expect for such a shagged set of tires. Fast forward nearly four years and the S23 isn't a massive change from the S22 in terms of feel, which is a good thing indeed. Bridgestone's always been known for having a supremely good front-tire feel that gets transmitted to the rider from the top of racing down (remember Marc Marquez's front-end saves on the Bridgestones when he was invincible in MotoGP?), but the S23 takes the good points of the S22 and turns them up a few notches. Kyalami has this fantastic corner called the Mineshaft, a fourth-gear, 150 mph downhill left-hand sweeper that's immediately followed by a tight