Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Jim Allen: The Man Jim Allen is the bearded face of Dunlop tires in Al'4A Super- bike racing. A former racer himself, Allen looks forward to Daytona the way most people look forward to tax audits. Dunlop has had unparalleled success at Dapona, winning most every race for years on end. A noticeable exception was Iast year's Superstock race. won by Vincent Haskovec on Pirelli tires. That tiny lack of success is what drives Allen and the rest ofthe Dunlop team to improve the breed, while always maintainint a margin of sarety. The introduction of the Dunlop's NT line for last year's tire test was a vast improvement- The tires produced superla- tives lonS absent from the Daxona multicomPound tires. This year there was again improvement, but it didn't seem like one tire emer8ed as the clear favorite. That's where we started. There didn't seem to be one tir€ that emerged as the favorite among tlre various riders. Did you find differendy? Yes and no. When we sat down in the office l\4onday niSht after the [est. Basically what we do is, sort ol everybody sils down and say "What did he say? What did he say? What did he sayl" And then you make a list of what you're toint to make for the race. ln Superbike, there are three constructions and every- body agreed which construction is best. Then we had four compounds and you hear one was crap, one wes 8ood, one was this, one was the worst. lt's not uncommon for there to be tlvo or three different choices. The hardest thingwas Super- stock, b€cause we got !o the point lvhere there was more than one choice and then we get to the point where we have co decide based on test times. what we found with the test tires, what we accomplished. Sometimes we do have to make the decisions for the guys. You get to where you can't produce four or five specs. You've tot to bring it back to one or tvvo. I think rhere was enough aSreement to, certainly in Super- bike it's pretty self-evident, what we're Soing to make there we're going to have at least two options for the rear there and two options for the frcnt. Supersport, there was a lot - we tried a lot of new ituff, but we didnt have marry Suys trying it. So there's some guesswork there. Basically, they all seemed bette; not all bettei Once aSain there wis a casinS that was better and a couple ofcompounds that ollered promite. So we'll do something based on last year's race tire and [have] a couple ofoptions there, probably. Superstock - that's where you have to pay real attention to that one. That's one where we obviously rMant to win that one (his year There was enough ofan indicalion from the riders that we could make intelligent guesses on what's going to please them, and what's not goint to please. we had NTE INTE is the desiSnation for l7-inch NT tiresl 14, 15, 16, and everybody aSreed that [NTE] l4 was sort of a basic improvement over [NTE] I I , which was last year's iace tire. Then we had l5 and 16. Some people thoutht I 5 was betten some people thouSht 16 was beater. But in any case, they were both better than 14, which was bet- ter than last year's race tire. So we

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