PRODUCT REVIEWI
STANDOUT FEATURE
Great front tire feel and incredible
performance from the Sprint rear
compound.
RIDER ANALYSIS
It's extremely rare for any tire com-
pany to let a bunch of journalists
out on their new slick racing tires,
and it's even more rare that they let
you compare old and new tires on
the same day.
That's what we got at Buriram in
Thailand, one of the newest venues
on the MotoGP calendar. The circuit
features a mix of long straights and
sweeping corners that effectively
test a tire company's claims, and
having ridden many laps on the V02,
I was eager to test the new V03.
Bridgestone gave us a session
on the soft compound V03 to get
acclimatized to the slick tire's
incredible grip after a day on the
street-based R12, and straight
away, factors stood out—massive
edge grip that enabled ridiculous
elbow-dragging lean angles and a
rear tire that had so much grip it
started to push the front while dial-
ing the power back in.
The larger footprint of the V03
gave exceptional feedback through
the handlebars. Having raced for the
last decade almost exclusively on
Pirellis, the Bridgestone has a harder
carcass that requires you to load the
front a bit more to make it really bite
in, but when you do, turn-in speed
exceptionally fast and stable.
Transfer that to the rear tire, and
Bridgestone's claims about a better
feel when the throttle is first opened
seemed spot on, as I could feel pre-
cisely what the rear end was doing.
However, what I wasn't prepared for
was just how much grip the rear tire
had, so much so that it was almost
impossible to get the tire to break
traction to finish off the corner. This
2025, we were given a day on
the new V03 slicks to see if
the claims matched up to the
performance.
The front V03
provides lots of
braking stability,
but the turn-in
speed is even more
impressive. Just look
where you want to go,
and it'll help guide
you there.
P104
