The Bridgestone Battlax BT-016 Motorcycle Tire
The Bridgestone BT-016, five layer compound tire, they don't have actually five different compounds in the tire. To be accurate, there are three. There's a hard-wearing central belt, with a softer compound on the shoulders and, on the edge of the tire, you'll find the softest, grippiest compound of the three. Since there are five different components to the compound, Bridgestone calling it '5 Layer Compound' construction, which seems fair enough. The front tire has a harder central belt and gripper shoulders – 3LC- I'm sure you work out why.The Bridgestone BT-016 is impressive stuff, at the technical level if nothing else, given the production processes involved. Imaging trying to perfectly align five flat, long strips of 'rubber' to make a single compound and do it on a mass production level – while simultaneously ensuring the consistency of every tire.
There's little worth in tire designers and compound chemists coming up with fabulous ideas if they can't progress from hand-made race tires to mass-production road tires. But Bridgestone being the biggest tire manufacturer in the world, has the resources to push these technical barriers.
The five compound rear tire isn't so much about using the same compounds that the famous MotoGP racers have been using, rather the Battlax BT-016 is produced utilizing construction techniques originally developed for MotoGP racing. Well, when you think about it, there's not a lot of point in spending millions of dollars developing tires in MotoGP and then not using that gained technology for making some extra provide.
The Brigestone Battlax BT-016 is a great tire that can be ridden with massive confidence on the track on anything up to probably 800cc. Really, I rode as hard as I could, got on the throttle coming out of corners as hard I could, braked as hard as I could and was rewarded with drive out of corners, stability on the brakes, good feedback when trailing the brakes into corners, allied to stability and good bump absorption while on the side of the tire. In short, the Bridgestone Battlax BT-016 tires will fill you with confidence.
In terms of wear and wet-weather performance, well, only a few hundred kilometers will not tell much. For the wet-weather they pretty okay for a sporty-road tire.
