It’ s been eight long years since Pirelli introduced the Diablo Rosso Corsa, its supersport’ s road tyre, and a lot has happened in tyre technology in that time – leaving the Rosso Corsa behind the development curve of the rest of the tyre industry, much to the disappointment of the tyres’ fans. But fans can now rejoice as Pirelli has brought its supersport road offering bang up to date, with the Diablo Rosso Corsa II. The new tyres feature multiple compounds across multiple zones, which Pirelli says offers more grip... and more mileage – something of a winwin whichever way you look at it. More grip AND better mileage? Pirelli invited us to test the tyres for ourselves and find out exactly what’ s changed.
WHAT’ S NEW?
Well, pretty much everything really. As I said above, the name remains but with a‘ II’ tacked on the end, and this is still Pirelli’ s stickiest road option, barring the Supercorsas which are great‘ road legal’ tyres for the track but not exactly a good all-weather option. So, the name is the same, but everything else has changed. I’ ve always been one to not blindly accept marketing guff, so let’ s take a look at how Pirelli says it gets more grip AND mileage from the new tyres. The front tyre is now a two compound, three section / band configuration with a wide 100 % silica compound in the centre and 100 % carbon black on the edges. Ok, so Silica compounds warm up very quickly, giving good cold and wet grip, while carbon black( in this case utilising a compound derived from Pirelli’ s Supercorsa SC3) can withstand a lot of heat and grip at high temperatures. This is why silica-based touring tyres are normally good in the cold and wet but tend to start falling apart on the track, and track tyres barely grip when cold but
SO CORSA II
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