DEKRA Testing Highlights Dunlop SportSmart Mileage

Independent tread wear testing carried out by safety and quality specialist DEKRA has delivered a positive result for Dunlop’s new SportSmart motorcycle tyre. The Dunlop tyre was testing against Michelin’s Power Pure tyres, Pirelli’s Diablo Rosso and Bridgestone’s BT016 at DEKRA’s Narbonne Test Centre in France during January and February. During the testing staff from the centre rode 2009 model Suzuki GSX-R1000 bikes over a 4480 kilometre selection of open roads in southwest France – 15 per cent motorway and 85 per cent open and city roads, of which 45 per cent were twisting mountain roads – in order to compress the effects of many weeks of hard European sports riding into a considerably shorter time span.

The Suzuki bikes were fitted with 120/70 ZR17 front tyres and 190/50 ZR17 rears inflated to the manufacturer’s recommended pressures of 2.5/2.9 bar. All four bikes and riders, and the tyres themselves, were rigorously rotated to ensure complete fairness and regularity in the testing. The rear tyre projections showed the Dunlop SportSmart to have a 25 per cent wear advantage over the Michelin Power Pure, a 46 per cent advantage over the Pirelli Diablo and a 64 per cent advantage over the Bridgestone. The Pirelli and Bridgestone rears both failed to complete the full 4480 kilometre test, the Diablo test being stopped at 3840 kilometres and the BT016 at 3200 kilometres.

For the front tyre, when the Dunlop is given a value of 100, the Michelin Power Pure recorded a comparative value of 52.5, the Pirelli 42.8 and the Bridgestone 35.2. The three competitors were worn out before the end of the test and were unable to complete the full test distance: the Michelin Power Pure test was stopped at 3840 kilometres and the Pirelli at 3200 kilometres, while the Bridgestone test was stopped at 1600 kilometres. Dunlop reports that DEKRA’s measurements showed the SportSmart front tyre to have a 90 per cent wear advantage over the Michelin Power Pure, a 134 per cent wear advantage over the Pirelli Diablo Rosso and a 184 per cent wear advantage over the Bridgestone. DEKRA found that a rider adhering to its test regime would need just 3.64 Dunlop SportSmart tyres to cover 10,000 kilometres, the lowest figure of the tyres tested. A rider using the least durable of the tested tyres would need 7.88 tyres – more than twice as many – to complete the same 10,000km distance, in the same conditions.