for a blast at the weekend without the need to worry if it rains . My main takeaways from the road session were the feeling of security , and even trying to wheelie out of corners before the bike was upright didn ’ t trouble the tyre , it just dug in and put the power down without a hint of slip . The other characteristic of the tyres was a single lean rate from upright to cranked over ; no sudden drops as the tyre changes profile . This is something that gives confidence in a tyre ’ s grip – there ’ s nothing worse than a tyre feeling like it ’ s sliding out as it drops onto a steeper part of the profile . As for longevity , as mentioned earlier , the centre section of the tyre has a 75 % silica blend for cold / wet grip and 25 % carbon black to help it deal with the stress of acceleration and still provide a decent mileage , which Pirelli claims is 15 % above the outgoing Rosso Corsa .
ON THE TRACK
Billed as tyres aimed at 50 % road and 50 % track use , I was certainly keen to try the tyres at Kyalami , which is a fast track with some high lean , high throttle corners – the kind that start a tyre sliding when you ’ re really trying to push on . Pirelli clearly has no problems with the new tyres ’ track potential ; the lineup of bikes to test the new tyres included the Ducati Panigale V4S , MV Agusta F4 , BMW S1000RR , Yamaha YZF-R1 as well as the S1000R , Tuono 1100 and Super Duke 1200 super-nakeds . My first session was on the BMW S1000RR , which is the perfect superbike for learning a track . It ’ s an easy-going , rider-friendly machine that makes going very fast exceptionally easy . During the warm-up lap the tyres showed to be really consistent during turn-in – there are no changes in effort needed to lean the bike and there ’ s no disconcerting ‘ drop ’ halfway through the lean of the bike . Only a lap later , barrelling into the sharp lefthander at the end of the sixth gear , 275km / h straight and slamming on the anchors into the second gear left , the front is super stable and offers huge amounts of grip . It was clearly well up to temperature . Despite there being a transition between the two compounds , I couldn ’ t notice a difference or point at
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