Bridgestone BT016 Launch at Jerez by Adam Rous
Tyres tested: BRIDGESTONE BT-016
I chose a YZF R6 for the first ride of the day, after the initial briefing, and the first couple of laps were spent getting a feel for the bike and tyres. The weather was pretty warm even at 10:30am and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, which made for perfect riding conditions.
The first thing I noticed with the new BT-016 is the light handling from the tyre with minimum effort required to peel the bike into some pretty tight turns at Jerez. The feedback is also very good and keeps you in touch with what’s going on underneath you.
As the day went on the temperature rose steadily but the tyre didn’t go off in any way or reduce in it’s ability to impress. The side grip of the multi layer compound tyres is quite flawless and they ‘egg’ the rider on to try some pretty extreme lean angles, all the while being perfectly composed in the corner.
The compound either side of the centre layer does seem to react well to hard acceleration on the exit of a corner and keeps the bike moving forward instead of spinning sideways, so it seems like Bridgestone have done their homework. The one factor echoed by all riders is that the tyre is amazingly stable under heavy braking, which is what a sports rider demands these days, with the current crop of supersport machines and the quality of braking materials available.
The only slight problem I encountered was on the GSXR750 where the back end slid on the exit of turn one, but my feeling was that the rear shock was a little too soft to start with so this may have contributed to the slide. Mind you, the slide was predictable and it didn’t throw me out of the seat when the rear’s grip returned.
The general consensus of all the riders is that this tyre would make a quite capable club race tyre and will certainly meet the demands of the very fast road/track day rider. It’s worth pointing out that it will also be the chosen tyre for the Ron Haslam race school this year.
