[JPF]

here are some excripts from an article written about the new Michlin Pilot series tires. I have been using the Pilot Race on the track and love it so I switched to Pilot Sports for my S and have been very happy. The Pilot Race is great but unless they are ridden very, VERY hard they don't maintain tempurature and become very twitchy very fast which would make them very dangerous on the street. They also lack straight line stability because they focused the tyres performance on cornering.

"In designing the Pilot Sport, Michelin engineers had two specific objectives: build a tire with excellent straight line stability combined with outstanding cornering performance, and increase grip significantly when compared to currently available tires. Michelin was apparently confident they had accomplished these goals, because they chose an extremely demanding racecourse as the site of the official North American press introduction for the Pilot Sport.

Las Vegas Motor Speedway, in the 2.5 mile configuration used for the now defunct AMA national races, is a tough track. The banking allows machines like the CBR600F4 Honda (provided for the test by Freddie Spencer's High Performance Riding School) to reach speeds of around 130 mph. The transition from the high speed banking involves heavy braking and a dive across a nasty dip as the rider transitions back to the infield. At speed, this dip causes the front forks to bottom out, placing a tremendous load on the tire. Then there are the transitions from old pavement to new, and the infamous painted lines, which are like ice. Extreme lean angles, rough pavement, high speeds, heavy braking, and rapid cornering transitions characterize this track. If there were any problems with the tire, they would surface here.

We are extremely impressed with the Pilot Sport. It lived up to every claim made by Michelin during the press introduction, particularly with respect to grip, wear, compliance, and stability.

On both the F4 and the VTR1000, this tire was rock solid at triple digit speeds on the banking. It performed exceptionally well during pavement transitions, and provided outstanding grip at both high and low speeds, during deep braking, extreme lean angles, and aggressive acceleration on the side of the tire. Remarkably, the tires showed very little noticeable wear after a half-dozen hardcore track sessions. Even the prodigious torque of the VTR failed to produce any signs of excessive deterioration. In fact, the Pilot Sport proved to be an excellent match for the tire-sensitive VTR, which responds unfavorably to race-design tires. The outstanding compliance of the Sport was a good fit with the VTR's tuned-flex chassis, even with a knee planted firmly into the pavement.

The Pilot Sport, ranked against its main competitors, seems to have an edge when it comes to pure high-performance street riding on modern sporting machines such as the YZF-R1, ayabusa, Ducati 996, and others of that genre. Very often, such bikes come with fairly stiff suspension. Combine that with a stiff race tire on the street and you get a machine that isn't as much fun to ride as it could be. The Pilot Sport, with its extremely compliant shoulder and soft, grippy rubber compound, does much of the work that a soft, street-oriented suspension would do. It literally does a better job of cushioning rough pavement and conforming to irregular road surfaces, laying down a better contact patch with a higher coefficient of friction. While ultimate grip between the BT56 SS-Type and the Pilot Sport might well be a coin toss, the compliance contest goes to the Pilot Sport.

There's not an enormous difference between the two tires (which were both designed for the same application), but it's there. And like the SS-Type, the Pilot Sport uses silica instead of carbon black in the rubber compound, giving better wet traction and durability.

We know the SS-Type performs extremely well in the real world. It now has some very tough competition from the Pilot Sport. Our recommendation? If your machine is stiffly suspended, or if you ride on secondary or tertiary backroads with rough, irregular, or marginal pavement, or frequently encounter wet weather, the Pilot Sport may be a better choice. The SS-Type might be marginally better for canyon riders who confine their outings to specific, well-maintained backroads in areas where wet weather is infrequent. The SS-Type also gets the nod for being the better track tire, as it provides a bit more feedback during trailbraking maneuvers at deeper lean angles, as well as under hard acceleration out of a turn. Either tire, though, is an excellent choice and worlds better than previous offerings in the high-performance street category.

The inevitable question (we can hear it ringing in our ears now) is, "How does it compare to the Dunlop 207s?" Given the time spent discussing race versus street tires, the 207GPs are obviously not a good choice for street use -- that's why the firm makes the ZR series. The Dunlops are, of course, excellent tires. What they give up to the Michelins is largely in the area of wet weather performance, durability, and compliance. The Dunlop 207ZR has a very shallow tread depth, which means it won't last particularly long and won't channel water away as well as the Michelin, particularly when worn. The Dunlops also seem to go off very quickly toward the end of their lifespan. It seems pretty clear that the 207ZR has been eclipsed by both the BT56 SS-Type and the Pilot Sport, while the 207GP has incredibly stiff competition in the Pilot Race."