“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”

Well, okay, not so long ago and not really so far away. In fact, just this past weekend in Colorado Springs. I won’t bore you by making this a Star Wars parody, it just seemed like too easy of a pun to make given my southern accent, the new movie opening recently and the marketing assault that rivals anything in the war on terror…

At Daytona this year, plenty of paddock pundits were pontificating about Pirelli. Specifically, that despite Michelin losing their only factory team connection, there appeared to be a tire war brewing in AMA Superbike. With all the factory teams running Dunlops it was assumed this season would be a cakewalk for the UK based company but then Pirelli shod Vincent Haskovec rode his Emgo M4 sponsored Suzuki to a surprise win in the Superstock race. Had all the nay-sayers been wrong? Had Pirelli buying their way into the World Superbike series actually netted them a competitive race tire? Had Pirelli succeeded where Michelin had failed? Well, the subsequent races have shown that optimism for the Italian tire manufacturer was probably a bit premature. The best litmus test for this may well have been this past weekend at Pikes Peak International Raceway.

PPIR is hard on tires. In fact the general opinion is that PPIR is harder on tires than any of the other tracks currently on the AMA calendar. Daytona, long known to eat rear tires for breakfast, still doesn’t put the constant strain on the left hand side of the tire that PPIR does with over 1/2 the lap being one long bumpy left hand turn. This was vividly illustrated this year when three different factory and factory supported riders were forced to pit for a new rear tire during the Superbike race: Mat Mladin, Jake Zemke and Kurtis Roberts. During the race, both Ben Spies and Aaron Yates were noticeably spinning up the rear tire exiting tight left hand turns. It was one of these spins that cost Aaron Yates the race win.

No matter how bad things were for Dunlop, things appeared even more grim among their competitors. When walking around the pits one thing that was immediately obvious was how busy the Dunlop guys were. Their canopy had three stations with hydraulic mounting machines and three tables set up for balancing tires. At any given time there would be 8 or 10 crew members frantically running around handling tire duties for all the racers running their tires. Also interesting was that Dunlop brought three different compounds of tires to PPIR for their riders including two different multi-compound tires. These slicks have two or three different types of rubber all molded together into a single tire. The left hand side of the tire would be a harder compound that can stand up to the high temperatures generated in the long left turns and the rest of the tire would be a softer compound that could be effectively used in the right hand turns since that side of the tire runs cooler. It is even possible that additional “stripes” of rubber could be used in the tire so that a particular area of the tire could be made more resilent to overheating. Fascinating stuff and proof that Dunlop has really done their homework on PPIR over the years.

In contrast, the Michelin area was positively lazy. Three or four guys wearing Michelin shirts would generally be sitting around chatting or aimlessly balancing a tire. Plainly they are the least involved of the tire manufacturers and the lack of activity around their semi was clear evidence of that. Michelin should have the leg up on everyone else in terms of motorcycle tire development since they virtually own MotoGP racing. However, every track is unique and Michelin needs at least a couple of top level AMA Superbike riders running their tires if they hope to develop competitive tires for the US tracks. It isn’t happening given their current level of involvement.

Splitting the difference between these two, the Pirelli tire guys were moderately busy. Their biggest partner in AMA Superbike is the Emgo M4 team and you could regularly see crew members from the team at the Pirelli truck and vice-versa. Clearly they are working together closely. Unfortunately, at PPIR the Pirelli tires weren’t working all that great with the track. Michael Barnes was standing in for the injured Vincent Haskovec and actually carded decent finishes for the weekend…a fine forth in Superstock and a sixth Formula Xtreme. Not bad considering it was his first ride on the bikes. However, those results are even better considering how badly his Pirelli tires were sliding around after the halfway point in each race. In the early stages of the Formula Xtreme race Barnes was fighting with Ben Attard and Chris Peris for third place. Then his rear tire started sliding and he steadily dropped back to his eventual sixth place result. What was particularly noticable was that his tires were sliding exiting the sweeping right hand turn five. This would indicate that even the cooler right hand side of the tire wasn’t performing as well as the Dunlop tires run by the other racers. Probably the very situation that one of those multi-compound Dunlop tires is meant to address since the Pirellis probably run a hard single compound tire so the right hand side never comes up to operating temperature. The same thing could be seen in the Superstock race though Barney seemed to ride around the problem better on the GSXR1000 than he did on the Superbike-spec 600. Perhaps the heavier bike generated the extra heat to make the right side of the tire work better while overheating the left side even more. Great rides from Barnes but it does open the question of how competitive would he have been on Dunlops?

Finally, Bridgestone had a semi at PPIR but it was practically just there as a rolling billboard. I didn’t see any riders going to/from the Bridgestone area. Like Corona, they could have simply hired models to walk around in their gear and not really changed their impact on the weekend. Like Michelin, Bridgestone theoretically could be a huge force in Superbike racing since they are the biggest tire manufacturer in Formula One car racing and have recently taken a huge bite out of Michelin’s market in MotoGP racing. Its a matter of them deciding to put resources in the US national series and then getting some riders on their tires so they can start collecting crucial data from our tracks.

Either way, PPIR did highlight that the tire wars aren’t as hot as they first appeared at Daytona. Before anyone will really challenge Dunlop for supremacy in the AMA Superbike wars Pirelli will need to create a better tire and both Michelin and Bridgestone need to get some top riders on their tires. In the meantime, we can always hope that Barnes will get a chance to come over to the dark side and compete head-to-head with the factory boys.

Use the force, Michael…

[image from the Superbike Planet web site.]