Dunlop to enter trackday and road tyre segment with new SportSmart TT
- Dunlop has youngest and most innovative hypersport range.
- First Dunlop tyre for combined track/road segment for a decade
- Fourth new Dunlop Hypersport tyre in 10 months
- Uses FIM Endurance World Championship winning technology
Dunlop has announced they will launch a fourth new tyre in their hypersport portfolio in March 2018. The Dunlop SportSmart TT has been developed to meet the needs of riders with the very latest sports bikes and performance roadsters who want to use the same tyre on track and for road riding.
The name SportSmart TT derives from Dunlop’s road focused SportSmart range and adds the letters TT, which refer to “Track Technology”.
The launch of the SportSmart TT marks Dunlop’s comeback to a segment of the market where they last competed with the renowned Qualifier RR over a decade ago.
The SportSmart TT is the fourth new Dunlop hypersport tyre to be launched in the past year and completes Dunlop’s strategy, announced last year, of taking a new approach to the segment in redefining their range around the goal of a ‘tyre for every rider’.
Dunlop has youngest and most innovative hypersport range.
Professional Rider - D213 GP Pro – Launched Summer 2017
Seasoned Track Rider – GP Racer D212 – Launched January 2017
Experienced track rider with road use: SportSmart TT –Launch March 2018
Road Rider with occasional track use – SportSmart2 Max –Launched March 2017
“No other tyre manufacturer has completely replaced every tyre in their hypersport portfolio in the last year. We have the youngest and most innovative range in the market after an intensive year of launches. This shows Dunlop’s focus on developing new technologies that benefit every type of hypersport rider and proves our agility in transferring race winning learnings into our range quickly and effectively” commented Andy Marfleet, Marketing Manager, Dunlop Motorcycle Europe.
FIM Endurance World Championship winning technology
If the last year has been intense for Dunlop in launching new products, it has also proved to be a highly productive 12 months on the racetracks.
In addition to being the choice of Ian Hutchinson and Michael Dunlop in winning the Isle of Man TT Superbike and Senior races respectively, Dunlop tyres were also chosen by GMT94 to win the FIM Endurance World Championship, including both the Bol d’Or and Le Mans 24h races.
In these races, Dunlop developed a new motorsport polymer for grip and durability. The new Dunlop SportSmart TT uses a race compound that is proven to provide consistent performance and a versatile operating range – vital for combined road and track use.
To optimize the contact patch, Dunlop use an evolution of their innovative NTEC technology on the SportSmart TT. The new NTEC RT technology allows a tuning of rear inflation pressure to maximise the footprint on trackdays. It allows riders to keep the standard manufacturer pressures for road use, but increase the contact patch by up to 24 percent when riding on track.
‘These two technologies are key to the performance of SportSmart TT. When the tyre is fully unveiled in March 2018 we will reveal two additional technologies. The combination of these four innovations have resulted in the birth of a tyre which creates a niche of its own in the Dunlop hypersport portfolio. With four new tyres in the hypersport sector, we now truly have a tyre for every type of rider – whether on road or track’ added Marfleet.