CONCLUSION
Iknew all the tyres we tested would feel a little bit different, testing stuff back to back always really highlights the differences, whether it’s bikes or butt-plugs (I imagine), but I didn’t expect them to all feel quite so different. By a reasonably considerable margin, it was the Continental Sport Attack 3s that proved the least proficient on track. Their wide open tread just seemed to cause them to move around way too much and they didn’t seem to get much better or worse the hotter or colder they got.
The fifth place Bridgestone Battlax S21s and the fourth place Metzeler Sportec M7RRs both performed reasonably equally, with similar levels of grip, but the Bridgestone displayed a few signs of light front end chatter and on Metzelers, the R1M was that little bit easier to turn.
The Pirelli Diablo Rosso Corsa IIs were even better still but it was just the front that held them back, whereas the Michelins were nearly the full package. But nothing could quite match the grip offered by the Dunlop SportSpart TTs. Sure, they don’t quite have the outright grip of a MotoGP slick, but how many of us are really going to push any tyre to that level? I know I’m not. They did just about everything a track tyre needed to, which, for a read tyre, is pretty impressive in my book.
The truth is, if all you do is trackdays then there are better products out there for you (from all the above manufacturers). But if you want to kit your bike out with something that will work perfectly on the road from the off, without the need to change your tyres when you turn up on the occasional trackday, it might be worth looking at some of these.
Our test was strictly a track test, so we can’t say which would work best on the road, but what we can say is that all the tyres in our blind, back to back test, even the sixth place Contis, were more than capable of running round quick enough to be at the sharp end of the fast group.