he Moto Grand Prix World Championship hasn’t included a race in the United States since 1994, and won’t return until 2005 at the earliest. But the U.S. got a small taste of the GP atmosphere last January, when Michelin invited a select group of MotoGP riders to Las Vegas to help introduce the brand’s latest high-performance tire to the world’s motojournalists.
     Former world champions Freddie Spencer and Kevin Schwantz, as well as current GP stars Max Biaggi, Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden all gathered at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, along with 44 journalists from 15 countries, to sample the new Michelin Pilot Power sportbike tire.
     Inviting these Grand Prix riders was particularly appropriate, because the Pilot Power relies on technology originally developed for MotoGP, where Michelin has won 12 consecutive championships in the world’s premier motorcycle road racing series.

Grand Prix technology
for the street
     Recently, sportbike performance has escalated to a point where the average consumer can now buy a motorcycle whose capabilities exceed those of factory race bikes from just a few years ago. Noting this trend, Michelin engineers saw the need for a tire that was on the same plane as this new generation of sportbikes. The Michelin Pilot Power, which will be available from dealers in July 2004, is the first Michelin street tire to use a tread compound that was originally developed for racing use.
     This Compounds-Racing Optimization (C-RAO) rubber mix gives the Pilot Power incredible grip, and especially quick warm-up time, with no compromise in durability compared to the current Pilot Sport tire. These properties result from a combination of three 100-percent synthetic components, identical to those used in Michelin MotoGP tires:

Macro-molecular compounds (MMC)
High-technology synthetic compounds (HTSC)
Proprietary, 100-percent synthetic Michelin Racing Synthetic Elastomers (MRSE), which came directly from 2003 Michelin MotoGP tires.

Rubber science
     Tires are made up of “elastomeric” materials, which are responsible for a tire’s grip and longevity. A rubber compound may comprise more than 200 components: natural and/or synthetic elastomers, sulfur, reinforcing fillers (carbon black or silica) and a number of other ingredients with various properties (preservatives, vulcanization agents and others).
     Rubber may be synthetic or natural. Once vulcanized, the rubber provides the visco-elastic properties of the mix. Unlike an elastic material, a visco-elastic material, when deformed, returns to its original shape, but not instantaneously. This is known as hysteresis. Increasing hysteresis leads to better grip. The purpose of the synthetic rubber used for the Michelin Pilot Power is to make the compound more hysteretic.
     When mixed with elastomers, reinforcing fillers such as carbon black and silica also contribute to increased tire grip. While silica is the equal of carbon black in its resistance to wear and UV rays, silica promotes vastly improved grip in cold temperatures. The interaction of reinforcing fillers with elastomer chains is the determining factor in a tire's performance. Unlike carbon black, however, silica does not interact naturally with the elastomer chains, so a chemical bonding agent is needed. Michelin has patented an exclusive bonding agent and the process used to incorporate it in the rubber mix.

Would you try this with your street tires?

Born for the corners
     No matter how much grip you have, you can’t run racing slicks on the street. But the Pilot Power comes awfully close, with the softest rubber mix in its class and a radical, semi-slick tread design.
     Engineers use a measurement called Shore hardness to quantify the pliability of a particular rubber mix. With a Shore hardness of 58, the Pilot Power’s tread compound is six percent softer than that of its nearest competitor. Yet its mileage should be comparable to the highly regarded Pilot Sport.
     The Pilot Power also is more than just a dry-weather tire. On the Michelin test track at Ladoux, France, riders were able to lean a Pilot Power-equipped bike to an amazing 41.9 degrees in corners—in full-wet conditions! In the dry, they achieved an equally remarkable 50.6-degree lean angle.
     Aiding this cornering proficiency is a new casing profile that has also been inspired by MotoGP development. The Pilot Power’s more pointed profile, compared to the Pilot Sport, increases the size of the contact patch for improved feedback and handling.

Two former world champions, Schwantz (in front) and Spencer, shake down the new Michelin Pilot Power.

Do they work?
     At the Las Vegas press launch, journalists were invited to try out the Pilot Power both on the track and the road, using a variety of current-model sportbikes from nearly all leading manufacturers. Naturally, with an open racetrack at their disposal, the GP pilots couldn’t resist the temptation to mix it up as well.
     The serpentine Las Vegas road course has hosted an array of major-league series, including the AMA Superbike Championship, and is home to Freddie Spencer’s High Performance Riding School. With three-time World Champion Spencer showing them the fast way around, the racers were quickly up to speed and pushing the Pilot Power to the limit.
     “These are the race tires, right?” quipped 2003 MotoGP Rookie of the Year Nicky Hayden after his first session. Indeed, Hayden and his compatriots were quickly up to speed on the new tires, getting knees down, clipping curbs, and backing into corners with hair-raising rear-wheel slides that made observers forget these were streetbikes, not GP machines.
     When it was the journalists’ turn, the absence of stopwatches or lap counts made little difference as several seemed to make it a personal mission to establish themselves and their magazine as the fastest. At speeds reportedly approaching 170 mph on the LVMS front straight, the Pilot Power clearly showed its racing heritage.
     Several of the North American reporters on hand had amateur or pro racing experience, including Roadracing World’s Steve Atlas, who later wrote, “These are the best street tires I’ve ever ridden in my life.”

Nicky Hayden backs it into a turn at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

How soon and how much?
     In the wake of the positive press from the Las Vegas event, the Pilot Power has generated intense worldwide interest. Consumers will get their first look at the Pilot Power in July, when the tires begin appearing in dealerships. Initially the Pilot Power will be available in the three most popular sportbike sizes: 120/70ZR17 front, and 180/55ZR17 and 190/50ZR17 rears. A full range of sizes should be available by late 2004 or early 2005. Suggested retail prices will be comparable to the Pilot Sport.
     For more information on the complete line of Michelin motorcycle tires, visit http://motous.webmichelin.com.

Rossi and Biaggi were this close throughout most of the South African GP.

otoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi defied the skeptics in astonishing style at Welkom, South Africa, on April 18, winning his first GP for Yamaha after leaving the dominant Honda factory team at the end of the 2003 season. Rossi’s 60th Grand Prix win made him the first rider in history to win back-to-back premier-class GPs on two different makes.
     Michelin dominated the season’s first event from start to finish: Rossi claimed pole, 0.527 second under last year’s pole time, while second-placed Max Biaggi broke the race-lap record by 0.643 second and Rossi smashed the race record by 20.2 seconds. The improvement in race pace has continued an amazing trend over the past few seasons: last year’s race was 29 seconds quicker than the 2002 event, which was 24 seconds faster than the 2001 Welkom race.
     Rossi rode like a man with something to prove, pushing his Yamaha to the absolute limit to win by 0.2 second after a race-long duel with Honda-mounted Biaggi. The record-breaking race validated the performance of Michelin’s new 16.5-inch front tire. It also demonstrated the efficacy of a new-profile 16.5-inch rear, developed to handle the ever-increasing horsepower of the front-running MotoGP bikes, especially at a track that generates some of the highest operating temperatures of the season. All of Michelin’s 15 riders ran the new rear, while all but one used the 16.5 front. Michelin men filled ten of the top 11 finishing positions.
     “That was a fantastic race which suggests that we are in for a very interesting season,” said Nicolas Goubert, Michelin’s chief of motorcycle competition. “We’re delighted with the performance of our 16.5 front, with which the riders were really happy. And the rear also worked really well, thanks to the new profile it showed very good wear. I think the fact that Max’s new lap record, set on the last lap, was just three hundredths off last year’s pole time says it all.”

he 2004 AMA racing season marks the start a new era for Michelin in Superbike racing. While the tire maker has claimed the last 10 consecutive World Superbike Championships, that series has opted for a tire rule that excludes all tire manufacturers except one.
     That decision led Michelin to redirect its resources to series where competition among tire suppliers is welcomed, namely AMA Superbike and the British Superbike Championship. “When the most successful tire manufacturer in the history of the World Superbike championship goes racing, it is to show the quality of its products by pitting them against other brands,” said Pierre Dupasquier, Michelin’s worldwide director of motorsports.
     In AMA, Michelin joins its longtime partner Ducati in helping the Italian manufacturer mount its first true factory effort in the U.S., with rider Eric Bostrom aboard a Ducati 999 F04. Results have been promising so far, as Bostrom set a new track record in qualifying for the season-opening Daytona 200. An untimely mechanical problem knocked Bostrom out of the race while leading, but the team rebounded with back-to-back second places at next two races in Fontana, California. The Michelin/Ducati/Bostrom combination is just starting to gel, so a maiden AMA win can’t be too far away.
     In British Superbikes, Michelin supports the factory-backed HM Plant Honda team of Michael Rutter and Ryuichi Kiyonari. With six podium finishes in the first six races, plus one win and two poles, Rutter was just one point out of first place.

Eric Bostrom set a new lap record in qualifying for the Daytona 200 aboard his Michelin-shod Ducati 999.