Bridgestone S22 launch
Bridgestone’s new hypersport tyre has been given a good old pasting at Jerez.
When they told me that the new Bridgestone Battlax Hypersport S22 tyres were being launched on track at Jerez I thought, ‘Wow, Bridgestone must have a lot of confidence on their new hypersport tyres’. I was right, they did. It wasn’t long before we were being told how innovative and ground-breaking the new tyres are.
The S22 supersedes the S21, but Bridgestone were quick to tell us that the ’22 isn’t just a tweaked ’21, it’s a brand new tyre, which has been improved in every way
– from outright grip in the dry, to stability in the wet; and all without slashing the wear life of the tyres. In fact, they are claiming the new tyres can muster 15% higher corner speed in the dry, and 5% faster lap times in the wet. Wow.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Well, that’s what they would say,’ and you’d be right. They wouldn’t tell us if their new tyre was rubbish, would they? But suspend you’re cynicism for a second or two and allow me to explain what they have done to make such marked improvements compared to the S21s.
Two new compounds make up the triple compound ‘5LC’ rear tyre, with hard (in the centre), medium (on the ‘Traction Area’), and soft (on the edges), which now have 25% more fine silica molecules in contact with the road surface at any time.
A new tread pattern not only improves water drainage for better wet weather performance, but is said to have positively impacted the lightness and handling and feedback which the tyre gives you. According to Bridgestone, high-speed stability has also been improved by the incorporation of their MS-Belt Construction and High Tensile Penetration Cord Technology.
But how good could they possibly be? I mean, they’re a road tyre, right? Well, as I looked upon an array of shiny 2019 sportsbikes lined up in the pit lane under the temperate Jerezian April sun, I was about to find out.
Burnin’ rubber
Having never ridden around Jerez before (apart from approximately a million laps on the PlayStation in my yoof), I decided to bagsy a familiar steed for my first stint, so I placed my gloves on a saucy looking Kawasaki ZX-10R before wandering off to furnish myself with a Fanta Limón. Well, when in Spain and all that.
There were no tyre warmers, but a Bridgestone test rider had put in a few laps on the tyres a little bit earlier, so they were scrubbed in and not stone cold when I first jumped on the ZX10, but even so I was genuinely impressed with how they felt straight out the bag – my knee was on the floor on the first lap, followed by my elbow only a lap or two later. At a ‘learning my way around’ sort of a pace, the S22/ZX-10 combo was simply beautiful; everything felt smooth and easy going – but the ZX-10 is a fairly smooth bike anyway.
So, after the first session, I switched to a BMW S1000RR to see how the tyres could cope with a more powerful, more agile bike. And they coped just fine. Again, the tyres dished out plenty of confidence straight from the off to bury your knee into the Tarmac, and it wasn’t long before I felt like I could start to take liberties with what is, essentially, a road tyre.
As I started to increase the speed, the first minor limitation with the S22s was the ever so slight lethargy that the bike seemed to suffer from when being pulled from left to right. This is really only when compared to a proper track-focused tyre, like Bridgestone’s R11, or V02 slick, and in all honesty is only a limitation on track – in fact, realistically on the road (which is where this tyre was designed for) aggressive, trackfocused handling would often hinder you more than help you. I’m just being super critical.
What I cannot be critical about, though, is the front tyre. Not on the ZX-10, the S1000RR, nor the Gixer 1000 that I had ridden in the morning did I manage to push the front or cause the front tyre to do anything untoward. It was completely and utterly planted, no
matter how hard I seemed to push it. I even did a couple of sessions on a Kawasaki ZX-6R with the sole intention of trying to make the front do something that it shouldn’t. I couldn’t, but what a laugh I had trying!
And as far as the rear goes, I had to give it some proper hammer to get that to spin, too. With a 200bhp sportsbike it is certainly possible, and when giving it the berries I did start to have some big slides, but they were nearly always controllable, even for a ham-fisted dope like me.
Any good?
There are loads of good tyres out there these days. Some are great for racing, some are great for touring. It really is horses for courses. Bridgestone told us that they haven’t compromised with these tyres, but the way I see it, the S22s are the perfect compromise. They really are a tyre that you could use on your road bike all-year round, that will give you great handling on the road for plenty of miles, and that you can still use should you want to enter a trackday or three. I might not have been on lap record pace at Jerez on the S22s, but I would have certainly been well into the fast group had it been a trackday, so I’d say they’d certainly be capable of doing what most of us need a tyre to do on a track. Prices vary, but by mate managed to pick a set up for £222 for his Fireblade which, if you ask me, is a right bargain.
If you are a road rider, and you’re after a good tyre at a good price that isn’t scared of scratching on the road, or fast-grouping it at a trackday, you’d be plain daft to overlook the new Bridgestone Battlax Hypersport S22s. We caught up with Fabian Francois, Senior Manager for Bridgestone Motorsport Engineering & Product Planning, to get his take on their new hypersport product.
FB: The S21 was a benchmark tyre only a few years ago, in 2016. Why do we need an upgrade so soon?
FF: We need to fulfil a lot of different aspects with tyres in this segment. Every year the bikes have more power, are lighter and faster, so we, as a tyre manufacture, have to keep up with these changes. We need to produce a tyre that can cope with a modern sportsbike.
FB: And what did you need to do to ‘produce a tyre that can cope with a modern sportsbike’?
FF: With the S22, the main technical aims were to upgrade the wet performance, increase the handling to make the tyre feel sportier, and increase the side grip to improve cornering speed. But we wanted to do all of these things without sacrificing the wear life of the new tyre, compared to the S21.
FB: How do you go about making these improvements?
FF: We worked a lot on the pattern design. The S22 is a completely new tyre, so rather than start with an S21 and make some tweaks, we have gone back to the drawing board. You can see that by looking at the tread pattern design. The new design gives better water drainage, an increased feeling of lightness and better feel of the limit.
We also have used our 3LC technology in the front which is a dual compound, and these compounds have been fused with optimised resin components in the initial mix of the compound, enhancing the grip characteristics.
For the rear tyre, we have made all the improvements of the front tyre, giving us better handing and more grip over all the temperature ranges, but we have opted for a 5LC configuration, which means there are three different compounds. The harder compound in the middle is a brand new compound, with a slightly softer ‘traction area’ (this is the part of the tyre which will be in contact with the ground at half lean angle, when you are opening the throttle), which is also new, and then softer still on the very edges for high levels of grip when cornering fast – this approach gives us a really balanced tyre overall.
FB: With so much more grip, will the S22 last as long as its predecessor?
FF: The S22 remains with the same outstanding mileage as its predecessor. At the introduction of the S21 we made a huge step forward with 36% more mileage compared to its predecessor. This was something we wanted to keep with S22.