Rennie Scaysbrook | March 20, 2017
It’s all about the black stuff ahead of Pikes Peak 2017
We are heading back to Pikes Peak.
It’s not exactly a secret that I feel I need to get back there and complete the race properly after what happened in 2016, so we’ve committed to another crack at America’s Mountain and all the preparation and work that goes with it.
This year we’ll have a brand new, 2017 KTM 1290 Super Duke R as our race weapon and also a teammate, but all that will be formally revealed when we take delivery of the bike. For now, it’s simply a matter of blowing off the cobwebs and getting back up to speed, ensuring the race is a safe and fast one as we try and go one better in 2017.
We are once again teaming up with Pirelli, and this past weekend we headed out to Buttonwillow for the AFM round to evaluate a bunch of different tires and how they feel with my 2015 Super Duke—the same one I raced at the mountain and the same one I fell in love with so much, I bought it.
Pirelli has been nothing short of marvelous with last year and this year’s efforts. They have helped us at every turn but for this year, we are looking at running their sister company, Metzeler, instead of the famous red and yellow brand.
Metzeler run with great success at the Isle of Man TT, a circuit much more like Pikes Peak than Buttonwillow, so my plan is to see how both the DOT Racetec RR K1 soft compound and K2 medium compound, as well as the Racetec slicks feel in comparison to the Pirelli Supercrosa SC1 DOTs that are currently run in the European Superstock 1000 championship that runs alongside WorldSBK and the Pirelli Superbike SC1 slicks before making a decision as to what to use at Pikes.
The truth is, I probably won’t know until I get to the mountain what I will use (DOTs or slicks), but I hope to at least figure out what brand I will be on before then!
Pikes Peak mountain is such a strange track (road). Throughout all the practices at last year’s meeting, the temperature was blisteringly cold but the race (at least for me, running later in the day), was quite hot. That meant track conditions changed so much and grip varied so wildly that I thought I’d sprung an oil leak. Trying to account for such changing conditions is seriously difficult, and that’s also before we take the condition of the road into the picture. The mountain spends most of the year under tons of snow, the asphalt constantly in a state of expanding and contracting with the varying temperatures. This causes the asphalt to crack and buckle, making for a pretty wild (and bloody dangerous!) ride, to say the least.
At Buttonwillow, the conditions couldn’t be more different. Here is a purpose built racetrack, billiard smooth in comparison, however, it still serves to highlight the differences between each tire’s performance, at least in a controlled environment.
I started off using the Pirelli Supercorsa DOTs. This is a tire I have spent many, many hours on and I know works extremely well under a wide variety of conditions. Not being an expert at Buttonwillow (I’ve still yet to unlock the secret to going fast there) meant my race times were nothing flash, but they were consistent, hovering around the 1:52-1:50 range, about five seconds off what the super-fast pros were doing on fully fledged superbikes.
The Pirellis have exceptional grip for the first 10 laps. They stick like sh!t to a blanket and give very readable feedback, which is something I love. The front is especially good in telling you what’s going on, while the rear slides in a predicable manner, very similar to the SC1 slicks we ran last year at the mountain.
Times were a consistent low 1:52s over the first three sessions on Saturday, something I was relatively happy with. Switching to the Metzeler Racetec DOTs (the same tire that did a 132mph lap with Ian Hutchinson on board at last year’s TT) I found the initial grip a little less than the Pirelli but it stayed consistent, with laptimes dropping to 1:51s and staying there for the best part of 21 laps—not bad at all for a DOT tire. The Metzelers don’t have quite the warning level of the Pirellis in that when the rear slides, it seems to let go a bit quicker than the Pirelli. It’s controllable, no doubt, and something I think I could get used to given a bit more time on them.
The fact that the Metzelers wore so well over such a long distance was a nice surprise. I expected the times to drop more but, even with a properly shagged rear tire, they were pretty competitive, enough for me to finish second in the Open Twins race.
For the last race of the day, I threw on a set of Pirelli SC1 Superbike slicks. The result didn’t really surprise me in that I managed to go consistently two seconds faster on the slicks, but the controllability of the tire did. Those SC1s, for a rider of my ability, are damn awesome. They have grip for days, have excellent feel on braking and initial turning and smear themselves all over the road on acceleration, allowing the bike to hook up and blast forward. They have such a lovely, malleable feel, so at Buttonwillow, they came out a clear favorite.
But does that mean they will be right for the Pikes Peak mountain? I ran them last year, so I know they work, and at this stage I’m leaning towards running slicks if the weather permits it. That being the case, the next test will be to get some SC1s and try them against some Metzeler Racetec slicks that will be coming into the U.S. next month.
It’s all about testing and data. Here we go again!
Photography by Oxymoron Photography