DAYTONA BEACH, FL, DEC 5: If you’re racing in the 2009 AMA Superbike Championship, expect to spend $400 for a set of tires, $420 at Daytona.
The pricing was among the many details Dunlop released on the first day of the three-day December Daytona tire test. The American Superbike breakdown is $175 for a front slick, $225 for a rear slick, plus sales tax. Each Daytona tire is $10 more expensive. Tires for all other classes, Daytona SportBike, Supersport, and MOTO-GT, will cost the same as Superbike at Daytona, but will be less at the other tracks; the front is $155 and the rear $205, plus sales tax for the treaded DOT’s.
In dry conditions, each rider in American Superbike and Daytona SportBike will be able to use at most six front and nine rears, plus an addition set for the ten Superpole competitors in each class. The same quantity applies to single races as double-headers. Riders in the Daytona 200 get three extra sets front and rear. If conditions mandate, American Superbike riders will also get three sets maximum of intermediate tires, which are part of the dry allocation. And in the rain, they get four sets for double-headers and three for single races. Supersport riders get four fronts and four rears per weekend and two sets of rains. MOTO-GT will have five sets per team, per weekend for three hour events, with an unrestricted supply for the eight hour races. In the rain, the teams will get three sets for the three-hour races and an unlimited number for the eight-hours.
The American Superbike Dunlops will be similar for most tracks, excluding Daytona, where the tires are unique. American Superbike riders will have a choice of three different fronts (soft, medium, hard) and two different rears (soft/medium and medium/hard) for dry races, but only one spec each front and rear for intermediate and wet races. At Daytona, the Superbikes and Daytona SportBikes will have one front and one rear spec, each in two compounds. Daytona Superbike will have two Sportmax GPA fronts and two rears for each race, with one spec front and rear for the rain.
Front tire rims will be 3.5 inches with the rear either 5.5 or 6 inches.
The tires will be sold at the track by one of two Dunlop distributors, either Race Tire Service, for the eastern half of the country, or Sport Tire Service for the western half. The tires must be bought from these distributors; “Only tires purchased at the track may be used in AMA Pro competition and these tires will be required to have current race-weekend AMA Pro tire identification stickers affixed to the sidewall when the rider enters the track.
Those tire identification stickers, which have an RFID chip built in, will allow AMA Pro Racing to keep track of all tire usage.
