10
November
2016
|
15:59 PM
Europe/Amsterdam

New Dunlop track day tyre wins the ultimate test – victory on its racing debut.

- Road legal Dunlop GP Racer D212 designed for track days and racing

- Includes technologies developed in FIM Endurance World Championship success and cascaded from the D212 GP Pro

- Tyre secures victory in French Supersport racing debut

Dunlop has announced that the highly-regarded GP Racer D211 road legal track tyre will be replaced with an all-new product in early 2017, having signed off the new tyre after an extreme validation and testing programme – including some of the toughest races in the world! Dunlop’s key objective was to develop a tyre with exhilarating handling and this validation process confirms the achievement of this aim.

Not content with just doing testing on secret proving grounds, Dunlop has given the new GP Racer D212 a very public test of its abilities.

Prototype tyres were used during the 12 hours of Portimao and the 24 hours of Barcelona, and final spec pre-production treaded tyres were used for the Bol d’Or in 2016, before a final public test of the first production-spec GP Racer D212 in the final round of the French Superbike Championship – where Lucas Mahias rode the GMT94 Yamaha to victory in both Supersport races.

Dunlop’s Technology Director, Sebastien Montet, explained the rationale for such public testing: “We had conducted thousands of miles of track and road testing in addition to many hours of simulations. But there is nothing quite like a real race situation to gauge the performance, durability and consistency of a new tyre in the heat of intense competition. We have proven many of the GP Racer D212’s new technological features in our race tyres, and towards the end of the validation process we chose to fit the full final product to championship contending bikes” 

The GP Racer D212 features several race proven technologies including:

  • A new Multi-Tread compound designed to improve durability, warm-up time and ultimate grip. 
  • The revolutionary NTEC system, which allows pressure tuning for optimum road or track performance
  • The tyre also has a newly developed front and rear tyre profile to increase agility and rider confidence.

These technologies include learnings from Dunlop’s professional race tyre, the GP Pro D212, a tyre that Michael Dunlop relied on to take his 2013 Isle of Man TT class lap record of 131.2mph - faster than he achieved on a slick-shod superbike.

Dunlop chose to do the final product validation in Endurance racing because of the variety of circuits used in this series of races.

Montmelo was chosen to develop the endurance compound due to the long curves and hot conditions in the Barcelona 24h race being a tough test of the tyre’s enduring performance.

The Bol d’Or was a demanding test of high speed braking and stability after the high speed Mistral straight. The 12h of Portimao is a notoriously physical event due to the directional and elevational changes. Here, the new front profile provided easier handling than its predecessor.

The GP Racer D212 goes on sale across Europe in January 2017.

 The range consists of 1 front and 4 rear sizes.