The Dunlop Sportsmart - The All Sportsbike Tire
Dunlop's Sportsmart is a tire with some serious ground to cover; it'll butt-up to the track-focused 'GP- Racer' at one end and tramp all over the very capable 'Roadsmart' road tire's capabilities at the other. In a bid to clean up the old, confusing list of Dunlop tires, Dunlop has introduced a 'one tire for all' approach for sportsbike riders.The Dunlop Sportsmart is a NTEC motorcycle tire. What is NTEC you ask? The NTEC acronym gives a nod to Dunlop's race-developed technology, giving better tire life and grip consistency. The 'continuously wound' construction of NTEC (New Technology, NT was registered by Microsoft) means cooler running temperatures, a multi-compound tread and, importantly, a larger contact patch.
Cooler running temperatures 'maintain carcass integrity', which helps prolong tread life allowing racers using NTEC tires to set faster lap times very late in the race. In turn, that allows Dunlop to use a multi-compound tire with higher-grip 'lateral traction compounds'. The larger contact patch is an obvious positive because it offers better feel in corner entry and improved cornering and drive traction.
The Dunlop Sportsmart is one extremely competent and very broadly effective motorcycle sport tire, at once capable of hammering round a race track with unfazed consistency and swimming its way around an incredibly treacherous wet circuit with confidence. It all but eliminates the need for Dunlop's Qualifier II and Qualifier RR tire models, butting up the GP Racer for track use and the Roadsmart, well, for the road. The notion of a 'do it all' tire used to seem impossible, demanding too many compromises. With conditions we tested the Dunlop Sportsmart tire so very similar to those the average rider comes across on a daily basis I'm not so sure anymore.
