Testing The New Dunlop Qualifier II Tyre
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Make no mistake, with sportsbikes still popular on the new and used market, Dunlop’s new sports tyre is going for a big slice of the action.
Dunlop’s new Qualifier II has big shoes to fill in the UK market and it’s a very important tyre for Fort Dunlop.
Over the last few years tyres have been developing as fast as motorcycles, with the pace of development meaning that a new model comes out every two years or so and the new Qualifier II aims to take on and beat the rival tyres like Michelin’s Pilot Power, Pirelli’s Diablo Rosso, Metzeler’s Sportec M-3 and Conti’s SportAttack.
In 2007 Dunlop took the brave move of launching the RoadSmart sports-touring tyre at their test facility at Mireval while offering journalists the chance to back-to-back test them against the competition. They tried to do the same with the Qualifier IIs, but with mixed results. Back then brand-new and identical Suzuki GSX-R750s, VFR800s and R1200RTs allowed us to compare the Dunlops against the opposition, but there wasn’t such a level playing field with this launch. Instead we had a variety of used bikes including Yamaha YZF-R1s, several models of GSX-R1000 from K5s/K6s to the later K7 and K8 models, as well as different versions of the middleweight Triumph Street Triple and Street Triple R.
With a range of bikes being used in such different specs (some with aftermarket exhausts, some without) even with ‘stock’ suspension settings all the bikes felt completely different meaning that the real benefit of a ‘comparitive test’ fell apart – as did some of the bikes. I had one bike suffer brake-induced chatter in one session, while in another the technicians had failed to tighten the chain adjusters so by the end of the session the bike was trying to chew up its own swingarm. Thanks Dunlop.
With all this, I don’t want to make a comparison in the dry between the tyres, as it wouldn’t be accurate, but I did get most time on the Dunlops and Mireval’s ‘high-speed’ track as it’s called, which is a good test of tyres. The 3.3km circuit has a few fast corners, rises, hard braking sections and tight corners thrown in to complete things. In the hard braking areas the Qualifier II’s felt absolutely solid and also changed direction quickly between the chicanes in the final part of the track. These direction changes were also very consistent, perhaps due to the Qualifier II’s Carcass Tension Control System, where the forces and stresses acting on the tyre in cornering are distributed in a linear fashion across the tyre.
Confidence is the word thrown about by the marketing guys at Dunlop, and it’s in the middle of the corner, leant right over that these tyres impressed. Although I get my knee down, I’ve never been one for a Rossi amounts of lean angle, but these tyres really encourage you to lean over further, so much so that the peg went down on the R1 and GSX-R1000 closely followed by my toe-sliders. No fuss, no drama and the bike was still rock-solid in the corner.
Comparisons
Where I could make comparisons between different tyres was on the 1 mile wet track, thanks to a bunch of mint Kawasaki Z1000s on various tyres as well as the new Qualifier IIs. During the first session on the Bridgestone BT-016, I didn’t experience any big slides when ‘leant over’ and the tyres felt stable under braking for the hairpin, but you would get just a hint of movement through the bars during some of the faster wet corners.
On the Pirelli Diablo Rossos, I felt least comfortable. These tended to feel like they were moving about quite a bit more during direction changes and my confidence in them wasn’t as good as with the Bridgestone’s. Finally the Dunlop’s felt comparable to the Bridgestone’s in side-grip in the wet, perhaps a little better, but they did give more confidence under braking into some of the tighter corners. Again, this cannot be described as the perfect comparison test, as the big concern here when doing these tests is that you’re getting confident with the track and conditions which therefore makes the Dunlops feel better. By the time we finished on the Dunlops, the next group was out, meaning that we didn’t have time to re-try the competition’s tyres, a real shame.
Speaking to Dunlop’s wet rider, he explained that in his opinion it’s the Pirelli Diablos that are the better tyre in the wet over the Bridgestone’s as they communicate what’s happening to the rider better, compared to the Bridgestone’s which simply get to a point and then lose grip. For me, it’s about confidence and the Dunlop’s were best, followed by the Bridgestone’s. What was interesting was seeing the data-log from Dunlop’s testing on the wet track. The Qualifier II was around six seconds faster than the nearest rival, with the original Qualifier in third, and another competitor’s rubber down in fourth. The Qualifier II showed a greater and wider performance margin in pretty much all areas – only in the initial drive out of the hairpin did the Qualifier II’s lose out to two other tyres, but as a Dunlop guy explained, the overall lap-time was still quicker in balance thanks to more corner speed and a better entry.
Availability
Dunlop Sportmax Qualifier II’s are available from the end of March. The retail price per pair is around £225. Sizes available include: Front – 130/70 ZR16, 120/60 ZR17, 120/70 ZR17. Rears: 160/60 ZR17, 170/60 ZR17, 180/55 ZR17, 190/50 ZR17, 190/55 ZR17 and 200/50 ZR17.
Background
Way back in 1987 Michelin arranged a back-to-back test of their new road-going radials in direct competition with rival manufacturers and twenty years later in 2007 it took Dunlop to the launch of their sports-touring RoadSmarts to do the same.
With the new Qualifier II being such an important tyre to Dunlop, they decided to do the same, using the brilliant Mireval facility as the proving ground, complete as it is with an impressive two mile high-speed handling circuit and a purpose-built one mile wet track.
Technical
Emmanuel Robinet is the R&D director for motorcycle and motorsport and he says that the successful design and development of the RoadSmart tyre proved to be the basis for the new Qualifier II. He explains: “We know market requirements in tyres are moving fast, but we needed to know what the expectations were of our next and new products. We had to know what we needed to do to succeed; we used similar methods as employed successfully in RoadSmart and applied them to Qualifier II. We knew that one big step for Qualifier II was to improve wet weather performance but not at expense of other areas, this is a supersport tyre after all. So we looked at tyre performance targets and then developed and deployed the tyre technology that we have to hit those targets. We also listened to feedback from journalists and our customers. We wanted to produce a tyre which is a fantastic compromise on which you can ‘Ride With Confidence’ and we know that this means different things to different people. For some it may be a tyre that can work in hot conditions, for others it’s one that works well in the wet. It has to be many things to many people, so we were aiming for a perfect compromise.”
The original design approach used in the RoadSmart was made use of in the creation of the Qualifier II and the off-road MX-31 and MX-51 tyres, which were launched alongside the new Qualifier at Mireval.
Robinet says that the range of performance for the Qualifier II was expanded beyond that of the original tyre, so that the new model overlaps RoadSmart in the sports-touring section and Qualifier RR in the hyper sport market.
The Qualifier II uses a single-tread technology on the front tyre and Dunlop’s TTC or Triple Tread Compound on the rear. This gives consistency to the front and the best of both worlds on the rear; a softer compound for better side grip on the edges of the tyre and a harder-wearing one in the centre. “TTC has come to us from racing,” says Robinet, “and the rear compound offers maximum pure grip between 35 and 55 degrees of lean angle, without compromising stability or longevity.” Different types of silica are also used in the two compounds to suit the demands of each part, and an ultra-refined carbon black helps grip in the dry and the delicate balance of mileage possible from the tyre. Robinet explains that advances in carcass construction have brought further advantages for the Qualifier II. “Our CTCS or Carcass Tension Control System improves the even spread of stress over the whole radius of the tyre, so improving the ‘quality’ of the contact patch, giving the rider improved stability, handling and a feeling of confidence in what the tyre is doing.”
The Dunlop team worked hard on the amount of contact area available at low camber, or leant over in the turn with the Qualifier II, and there’s 8% more contact patch in this design, giving better cornering performance and rider feedback. The tread pattern itself also had to look good, oddly. Robinet explains: “We think this is a sexy tread pattern, but we have also put a lot of technology into this pattern to give it a more regular ‘land/sea’ ratio distribution to aid stability and performance in the wet.”
Robinet adds: “In short, when we tested the new Qualifier II against its rivals, we found that while an individual tyre would be strong in one area, either dry handling or wet weather performance, our new Qualifier II has the best compromise of performance wet and dry and gave riders confidence in all regimes.”
Related Links
www.dunlopmotorcycle.com
