Michelin Pilot Road 4

Michelin is a tyre behemoth of the highest order, and it has 1300 people alone working on compounds at its headquarters in France.

Over the last couple of years those men and women have probably been burning the candle at both ends as the company has set about regenerating its entire range of motorcycle tyres, culminating in an update for its top-selling Pilot Road collection.

The end result, the Pilot Road 4, is designed to appeal to a broad spectrum of road motorcyclists across three separate variants: standard, GT (touring) and Trail (for road-based adventure riding).

The fourth iteration of the popular sports touring hoop certainly isn’t a massive departure from the Pilot Road 3 – the standard and Trail tyres have the same carcass as the predecessor – but the enhancements have focussed on the key tyre performance metrics: increasing grip in both wet and dry conditions, longevity and handling. And it took around two million kilometres of testing to arrive at the final product.

With the same tread pattern across all three versions, Michelin claims a 17 per cent shorter stopping distance than its nearest competitor (in this case, the Bridgestone T30), and it says that increases to 24 per cent (20 metres) on extremely slippery surfaces such as painted lines. As well as the Bridgestone T30, other tyres referenced in the Pilot Road 4 literature -- read comparison tests by an independent body -- are the Dunlop Roadsmart II, Metzeler Z8 and Pirelli Angel GT.

Michelin also claims the Pilot Road 4 lasts 20 per cent longer than the Pilot Road 3, and the new range has a 50-degree thermal amplitude – basically they grip from minus five degrees all the way to 45 degrees. To put that in an Aussie perspective, that’s operating efficiency from the snowfields of the Great Dividing Range to Cooper Pedy (SA) in the middle of a sweltering summer.

Laconic New Zealander Graeme Crosby was once asked during a Castrol 6-hour telecast on the ABC what hoops he was using in his next session. He replied: “Ones that are black, round and made of rubber." Perfectly tongue-in-cheek (although knowing Croz he probably would not have had a clue…) and a valid response, but there’s an enormous amount of technology that goes into motorcycle tyres: Michelin doesn’t employ so many chemist and compound gurus for the sake of it; it has an annual research and development budget of $880 million.

Michelin defines four key technologies behind the Pilot Road 4, and it even flew in a heavy hitter from the French head office, Christophe Duc, to tell us about them in more detail. Duc has been at Michelin for 23 years, and is now the marketing director for motorcycle and scooter tyres.

A major exterior feature of the Pilot Road 4 is siping technology, which is basically a series of reservoirs on the tread designed to clear large volumes of water on wet roads post haste. The know-how – first introduced by Michelin in 2011 – has now been taken to the next level with the edge of the sipes chamfered to prevent abnormal wear in extreme conditions.

As for the dual compound technology, the Standard and GT hoops have identical layouts, with a harder compound in the middle of the tyres (40 per cent on the front and 20 per cent on the rear) flanked by softer compounds on the shoulders (30 per cent front, 40 per cent rear).

The Trail variant has a softer blend, similar to the Standard and GT front. And don’t be fooled by the Trail terminology – it’s produced for road-based adventure bikes such as the Suzuki V-Strom and has no off-road wherewithal.

Dual compound technology was first suggested by a Michelin employee in 1989, and it soon had a racing application (1994) for riders like our very own Mick Doohan. Interestingly, racing has again taken on a new meaning for Michelin as it’s just been announced as the official MotoGP supplier from 2016, replacing Bridgestone. And as Duc said, if new technologies trialled and tested in racing can’t be transferred into road tyres it’s a meaningless exercise.

In addition to the advancements made in siping, the second major technological update for the Pilot Road 4 is what Michelin calls Dual Angle Technology – coming to market after five years of R & D. It’s all about employing a combination of bias and radial constructions to try and make the most out of both: load carrying capacity for bias, and “enhanced riding pleasure” for radial (see second video below).

The Pilot Road 4 range also features:

We’ve yet to sample the Pilot Road 4, but we’ll be addressing that in a few weeks when we ride the updated BMW R 1200 RT, which has the GT variant on it. And then we’ll be throwing some of the tyres on a long-termer down the track.

The Pilot 4 range is available in the following sizes:

Rears
150/70-17
160/60-17
180/55-17
190/50-17
190/55-17

Rears
170/60-17
180/55-17
190/50-17
190/55-17

Rears
150/70-17
170/16-17

For more information on Michelin motorcycle tyres, visit www.moto.michelin.com.

To find your nearest Michelin motorcycle tyre stockist, visit http://motorcycle.michelin.com.au/dealer-locator.