BRIDGESTONE R11 DOT RACE TIRE
PRODUCT TEST
P120
more tread on the ground under hard ac-
celeration—something the front tire obvi-
ously doesn't have to deal with.
The R11 is also notable because this
is the first DOT race tire to come from
Bridgestone as part of a full range, going
from 160 to 200 sizes on the rear and 110
and 120 sizes on the front.
On Track
The opportunity to test the Bridgestone
Battlax R11 came over two superlative days
at Utah Motorsports Campus on four dif-
ferent Yamaha motorcycles—the YZF-R3,
YZF-R6, YZF-R1 and YZF-R1M—tire warm-
ers and all.
As mentioned, the R11 can now be fitted
to pretty much any track/race bike you can
think of, so we started the test with a full
day on Yamaha's YZF-R3.
The R3 is about 50 pounds lighter than
something like the R1, and comes with less
than a quarter of the horsepower. As you
can imagine, this bike didn't stress the tires
anywhere near as much as the big bikes,
but the Bridgestone R11 was quite happy
to let me play about with diabolically late
braking and corner entry and still
make the corner.
The rear R11's acceleration
grip was unquestionable with
MSB) construction for the carcass.
There's still the traditional hard center
belt construction to aid high speed
stability, but the side belts are now
spaced to put more of the contact
patch on the ground at high lean.
According to Bridgestone, the
tread on the R10, with its old-school
Monospiral Belt (MSB), would cave in
slightly at full lean in the center of the
contact patch. The result was there
was less tire on the ground than there
could have been for when the throttle
was opened.
The V-MSB now fixes that and it
has an extra partner in the rear tire,
which uses what Bridgestone calls
the GP Belt. This sits over the
top of the V-MSB and helps
provide extra stability and
rigidity, as well as keeping
BATTLAX RACING R1 1F
120/70R1 7M/C 58V
BATTLAX RACING R1 1R
200/55R1 7M/C 78V
Bridgestone's Ultimat
Eye technology has
been largely responsible
for creating the new
tread design.
