Despite The Superb Grip And Handling Of The Current Crop Of Sport Tires, It's Hard For The Average Street Rider To Resist The Allure Of Only Having To Spend $100-$150 For A Pair
While I was on a recent photo shoot up in the mountains of southern California, a rider on an '07 Yamaha R1 pulled up to chat. During our conversation he mentioned that he found the handling of his R1 to be twitchy, especially compared with his previous mount, a GSX-R1000. When I noticed he had a set of Dunlop Sportmax GP DOT race tires mounted on his bike, I informed him that much of that twitchiness was most likely the result of his choice of rubber. Racing-oriented tires like the Dunlop Sportmax GP are geared toward maximum side grip and ultraquick steering at the expense of many other handling qualities, including straight-line stability and overall compliance. I asked if he'd ever considered trying a pair of Dunlop's superb Sportmax Qualifier sport tires, a choice that would surely cure his handling ills while still offering all the grip he'd ever need on the street.
His reply was that he had ridden on the Qualifiers and loved their grip and overall handling. What he didn't love was the $350-plus bill for the pair that lasted only 2000 miles. The Sportmax GP race tires that were currently on his Yamaha were racing "take-offs" (DOT race tires sold after one race or a couple of practice sessions, by which time the tire's absolute optimum grip useful to the racer will have been used up, but still with plenty of tire life left for the average street rider) that he'd bought for only $100. "I'll get about the same amount of mileage out of 'em while paying far less," he reasoned. "I know about making sure they get some heat in them before riding anywhere near aggressively, and even then I'm not going to ride that hard on the street anyway. And I don't ride this bike in the rain."
Buying race take-offs is a well-known practice among many sportbike riders these days, and having been in his position when I started riding, it was hard to chide his reasoning too much. When it comes to "consumables" on a sportbike, tires are by far the largest and most frequent expense for the owner. And many sportbike owners out there don't have large amounts of disposable income, especially after draining the bank account for both the motorcycle and the insurance.
Before the encounter with the Yamaha rider, I was chatting with a tire rep at an industry event when the subject of cheap Chinese tires now entering the U.S. motorcycle market arose. He said that one particular unknown brand was selling its pair of "radial sport motorcycle tires" for $150 out the door-and that dealers who sold them couldn't keep them on the shelves because they would sell out as soon as stock arrived. When I questioned the quality and performance of the tires, especially when compared with the name brands on the market, he said, "Oh, I wouldn't doubt they couldn't hold a candle to any real sport tire, and to tell you the truth I'd bet if you cut the tire open and looked at its construction that it might not even be an actual radial tire. But the guys that buy these tires don't care; all they care about is that the tire is made of rubber, it's round and it's way cheaper than the others. A lot of these guys don't have a twisty road within 200 miles of their home."
Most Americans are always searching for that bargain, and many times actual quality gets trampled in the headlong rush to get "a smokin' deal," as the tire rep called it. It's easy to generate endless justifications for cutting corners on various everyday products in the name of saving money, and we all know how hard it is to make ends meet at times. The problem in this case is that the tire is the only connection between you and the road. The performance of today's sportbikes is leaps and bounds beyond bikes of even 10 years ago, and transferring that performance to the ground asks a lot of the motorcycle tires' minuscule contact patches that are about the size of the palm of your hand. Ultraquick steering and superbike-spec brakes demand serious performance from the front tire, while the prodigious 170-plus-horsepower outputs obviously tax the rear rubber heavily. You may think just because you don't race or even do track days that quality tires aren't necessary for you and your style of riding-but are you willing to put them up against unforeseen circumstances on the road?
You need to be truly honest with yourself and your riding when you make compromises on your tires. The room for compromise is pretty darn small-no bigger than the palms of your hands.