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After the first MotoGP race of 2022, the Qatar Grand Prix was over, an observant Twitter follower asked me why the symbol used for Marc Marquez’ front tire choice was different to everyone else.

Watching the replay and then consulting the analysis PDFs on MotoGP’s new results section made clear what Marquez had done.

He and his team and chosen to fit a soft front tire that had been scrubbed in, and consequently, had been used for one lap already.

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic threw a spanner into the works for MotoGP in all sorts of ways. In response to the pandemic, the MSMA decided on an engine and aerodynamics freeze for 2020 and 2021, to limit costs in a time of uncertainty.

That went a long way to restraining costs, but as the world adapted to the pandemic, and it became clear that a global economic crisis had been averted, development budgets started to rise again.

With a lineup of popular choices for sport bike enthusiasts, Pirelli is now bringing out the next generation of its street-focused tires, debuting the Pirelli Diablo Rosso IV.

As the name implies, the tire is the successor to the venerable Diablo Rosso III, which is billed as a performance street tire for sport bike riders, suitable for mixed weather conditions and higher mileage uses.

The Rosso III sat below the Diablo Rosso Corsa II tire (one of our favorite street tires) in terms of performance, with the DRC2 being a street tire that also performs well on the race track.

Today we have some interesting news regarding tires, as Metzeler has released a unique track slick into the market.

Called the Metzeler Racetec TD, the German brand says this slick has been made with the track day enthusiast specifically in mind, and one of its many features is that it doesn’t require a set of tire warmers to be used properly.

The Metzeler Racetec TD is sort of a sister tire to the Pirelli Supercorsa TD, which is a DOT-legal street tire that has been optimized for track use – and also without the use of warmers.

As you can imagine, the Metzeler Racetec TD is a track only slick, but it follows the same line of logic as the Pirelli Supercosa TD.

A form of motorcycle racing that doesn’t really ever get its proper time in the limelight, the hyper-niche of drag racing motorcycles is often overlooked in the two-wheeled world.

This means that in many cases, motorcycle drag racers have had to make do with what’s available to them, and for those who race in a Pro Street Bike class that requires a DOT tire, that has meant a world of compromises.

Dunlop hopes that is about to change though, as the tire-maker has just released its first purpose-built DOT drag racing tire for motorcycles, the Dunlop Dragmax.

It has always surprised me that while Dunlop is a huge player in the US motorcycle tire market, the American brand hasn’t really latched onto one of its domestic market’s biggest trends on two wheels: adventure-touring.

I am sure that if you asked the tire gurus at Dunlop if they had an ADV tire in their arsenal, they would reply with several models to choose from. The graphic near the bottom of this story seems to support this notion.

But, diving deeper into Dunlop’s lineup shows really a strong showing of DOT-legal dirt bikes tire, but with plenty of white space on the board when it comes to the sizes and expectations common with today’s big ADV bikes.

Well, that needle is moving a bit today, with Dunlop’s latest news in the adventure-touring space. This is because Dunlop has two big announcement for its ADV tire offerings.

Why is the Suzuka 8-Hours dominated by Bridgestone tires? During last year’s edition, Michael Laverty and Sylvain Guintoli sat down with Asphalt & Rubber to explain why Bridgestone is the preferred tire of choice at Suzuka.

Even the most talkative factory riders get tight lipped when the topic of tires is raised. After taking nine tenths of a second off the unofficial lap record, Jonathan Rea was asked to compare the feeling with Bridgestone tires compared to the Pirelli rubber used in WorldSBK.

The triple world champion side-stepped that landmine with customary ease by saying “they're both very high performance tires.”

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We heard rumors of this tire at the beginning of the year, and finally we can talk about the new Bridgestone Battlax Adventurecross AX41 tire. A knobby dual-sport tire made for adventure-touring machines, the AX41 means that Bridgestone finally has an offering for ADV riders.

It is surprising to think that the Japanese brand has been without a tire for such an important market segment for so long, but that is water under the bridge now, with the Battlax Adventurecross AX41 tire debuting at INTERMOT and coming to American dealers at the start of next year.

When I was a new rider, I cut my teeth on Pirelli Corsa tires (and later on the Pirelli Corsa III), and as I got into doing track days, the Pirelli Diablo Rosso Corsa became my tire of choice, both as a track tire and also as a street tire.

Almost as grippy as “the good stuff” and considerably cheaper than track-focused tires of the time, the Diablo Rosso Corsa hit that sweet spot of performance and price that my relatively unexperienced two-wheeled-self required.

Best of all, after a few track days, I could swap-out the rubber on my track bike for road duty, and thus had a nice supply of new rubber for my street biking needs.

As Asphalt & Rubber became a larger part of my life, this tire strategy had to give way to trying other brands and other tires, but I was recently intrigued when Pirelli told me that they were updating this stalwart in their sport bike tire lineup, as there isn’t a lineage of tire that I am more familiar with on the market.

Creating the Pirelli Diablo Rosso Corse II tire for the 2018 model year, the Italian brand first invited A&R out to South Africa to see if this new incarnation of the Corsa lived up to the high-water mark its predecessor left behind. In short, it did.

But, only a couple days with a new tire can be tough to use to form an opinion. Not content to be so easily swayed, I have since spent a considerable amount of time on this new Pirelli.

Riding three more trackdays (on three different tracks), trying six bikes in total, and plowing down a thousand street miles later, I can honestly say that the Pirelli Pirelli Diablo Rosso Corse II might be the best sport bike tire on the market. Let me explain.

Pirelli will continue to supply tires to all classes in the World Superbike Championship for the foreseeable future. The Italian tire manufacturer has extended its current contract with Dorna, through the 2019 and 2020 seasons.

Pirelli first took on the role of single tire supplier in 2004, and sparked a revolution in motorcycle racing.

With the favoritism of competing tire factories for sponsored teams removed, and a much more level playing field for privateer teams, the World Superbike model would come to be replicated in many different road racing championships, with MotoGP eventually following suit in 2009.

Vintage racers know all too well the difficulty there can be when it comes to finding appropriate tires for the race track, as the odd rim sizes of classic motorcycles are often outside the sizing parameters of good modern sticky tires.

This leaves many racers using street-focused tires for their racing needs, but that could all come to an end, as Metzeler is expanding its Racetec RR Range to include 18-inch wheel sizes.