Dunlop supplies its best development tires to all the Japanese factory teams in the AMA series, while also providing tires to MV Agusta and Jordan Suzuki. All the Dunlop teams are on allocation. They're given a set number of tires for the season; above that, they pay. Given their rapidly rising testing habits, many pay a lot extra.
"The one thing we've worked very, very hard at, the one thing we pride ourselves on, is supplying the same tires, same specification, to all of our contracted teams," Dunlop's Allen says. "Essentially in the case of Superbike, it's all the teams." In addition Dunlop allocates tires to Celtic Racing, Erion Honda, Graves Motorsports Yamaha, Matsushima Performance and others. For some privateers it can be the difference between racing and not racing. Erion Honda's Jake Zemke credits Dunlop for allowing him to continue racing in 1998 when he was on his own.
"In Jake's case, anything with a tread pattern on it was a good tire when he started," Allen laughs. Zemke agrees. "I turned my DOTs into slicks. When I was a privateer in '98 doing everything on my own, I was fortunate enough to have some support from Dunlop," he says. "When I rode 750 Supersport as a privateer for the first time, Jim Allen wanted to help me out, gave me tires. If I'd had to pay for tires I wouldn't have been able to race. As it was we already missed three races."
Dunlop's Jeremy Ferguson (left), Michelin's Jean-Philippe Weber (center) and Bridgestone's Hiroshi Yamada (right) discuss the letter they've drafted in response to Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta's proposal to make MotoGP a spec-tire series. The three tire manufacturers all rejected the proposal. | 
Several years after World Superbike had gone to spec tires and following the spec-tire scare in MotoGP, the British Superbike Championship decided at the end of the '07 season to move to a spec-tire rule, with Pirelli beating out Dunlop in the bid to be sole supplier. | 
Dunlop's Jim Allen leaves no doubt that the company will fight to remain in the AMA Superbike series: "If we are presented with a situation where spec tires are called for, we'll fight to protect what we've built over the years." |
What Zemke isn't against is competition. "If another company wants to come in to supply Superbike tires, great. I think the competition is great. It's good for the bike manufacturers; it's good for sales. They want to win on Sunday and sell on Monday. They want to be able to put out ads that we won the Daytona 200; we won this Supersport championship."
Given its history in World Superbike, it's no surprise that Pirelli supports control tires. Christoph Knoche, Pirelli's North American racing "channel" manager, says, "Generally speaking, we support it." And though he says he can't speak for the company, they will bid on the AMA series if asked.
Pirelli doesn't race in the Superbike class. Without any of the top teams, the company knows it can't win. Pirelli-supported teams are given an allocation of tires, but with Superstock running on 17-inch wheels there are no specific Superbike tires (which run on 16.5-inch wheels). Team M4 EMGO Suzuki's Geoff May rode in 11 Superbike races with a best finish of fifth at Daytona. Most of the time May was using the races as practice for his Superstock effort.
"We are not in Superbike at the moment because we don't see the point in racing against full factory teams," Knoche says. Because Pirelli doesn't have a presence in the AMA Superbike class, it relies on World Superbike as its development arena. "We get a chance to try it on all different bikes, which normally we don't get," he says. "We get Superbike, Supersport, Superstock. We get the advantage out of this proving ground on standard production tires which we sell." But, Knoche admits, competition does breed excellence. "Put it this way, if somebody comes up with an awesome tire and you have to beat that person, you have to develop a little faster.
"Racing now in AMA I normally say [Dunlop has] a 15-year advantage against Pirelli. So we have to keep up and we have to close the gap, but we want to win really fast. With control tires you can slow that down, but you take results from that into normal development, which we sell to people that are racing against other tire manufacturers which have to be up to date."
The British Superbike championship announced on December 13, 2007, that it had chosen Pirelli as its control-tire supplier. BSB went to a spec tire for many of the same reasons as WSB. Michelin supplied the HM Plant Honda team, which won the past two championships. Dunlop supplied the other factory teams but not the privateers.
Why Pirelli was chosen over Dunlop isn't known. BSB series director Stuart Higgs says the two offers were essentially the same. Likely it had something to do with Pirelli's experience in WSB-a party to the contract talks says the contract was based on the WSB contract, with Pirelli sizes.
With Dunlop being marginalized out of MotoGP-the Tech 3 Yamaha team went to Michelin for 2008-the company was hoping to split its development between BSB and AMA. Now all development of the British product will be done in America. But what happens in 2009? Will Dunlop be out of the worldwide racing picture? The decision will be made some time during this year.
The AMA Superbike Championship doesn't suffer because of the tires. It suffers because Ben Spies and Mat Mladin are dominating like no two riders ever have. Between them they won every race in 2007 and all but one race in 2006.
Dunlop opposes spec tires on a number of fronts, mostly due to their effect on development. "That's one of the big downsides as we see it. It doesn't foster development; it stagnates racing and therefore stagnates the transition to street tires," Allen says.
Dunlop's Jim Allen leaves no doubt that the company will fight to remain in the AMA Superbike series: "If we are presented with a situation where spec tires are called for, we'll fight to protect what we've built over the years." | 
A Bridgestone technician checks the tires on Rossi's Yamaha M1 at the Jerez pre-season tests late last year. It remains to be seen whether Michelin will be able to regain its competitive edge in 2008 without one of its best development riders. | 
AMA Pro Racing roadracing manager Morgan Broadhead broached the idea of control-tire rules in AMA Superbike, and it's believed that the proposal is still on the table for consideration in 2009. Unfortunately Broadhead suffered severe head injuries in a club-racing-practice accident and faces a lengthy rehabilitation; there currently are no plans to replace him. |
The Yamaha Tech 3 MotoGP team helped develop Dunlop's STQ line of tires that first showed up at this past December's Daytona tire test. With the loss of the Yamaha Tech 3 team, Dunlop lost its best development ground with the best riders and the most horsepower. If the AMA went to a control tire and Dunlop didn't get the contract, it would find itself out of racing in the biggest market in the world.
"I think that our view basically is we've never solicited, never encouraged spec racing. We race for competition," Allen says. "And we've never asked anybody to look at that; we've never asked any favors in that regard. So the company policy, as long as I've been with the company, has been to oppose spec-tire racing. What we want is open competition.
"Having said that, if we are presented with a situation where spec tires are called for, we'll fight to protect what we've built over the years. We'll fight to keep what we've built, whatever that means."
The support-class tire situation is more even. Pirelli has made strong inroads in Supersport and Formula Xtreme. The highlight was its one-two finish in the '07 Daytona 200. In Supersport, at least, privateers are on more equal footing. "The fact of the matter is that in virtually all of the Supersport races this year, the tires that we sold to the AMA privateers are the tires that [Jamie] Hacking and [Roger] Hayden and [Josh] Herrin and the rest of them were using," Allen says.
When Michelin came in to support Ducati's factory team in 2004, it quickly learned how difficult it was to make tires for the AMA tracks. The company that had won nearly every premier-class grand prix and championship for a dozen years could muster but one victory. Still, Dunlop took the threat seriously enough to fly in tire technicians and engineers from the U.K. for every race.
"Tires are pretty specific for the tracks we race on here," Zemke notes. "It forces manufacturers to build us better tires to last longer, be safer, have more grip. If I'm on spec tires, what's the driving force behind development? There's no reason for the tire manufacturer to continue developing if it's a spec tire. With nobody pushing them, how hard do they need to try?"
Only time will tell.