You’ll be forgiven for thinking “oh no, not another new tyre…” but in fairness to Dunlop, the current tyre has been around for 4 years so it could be argued that it was ripe for replacement. And I’m pleased to say Dunlop have kept things simple and named the “newbie” RoadSmart II. Continuing on from the success of the original RoadSmart, Dunlop felt there were areas they could improve on, particularly in high speed comfort and also in wet weather performance, and judging by the time I spent on the new tyre, at Mireval in France recently, I’d say they made a pretty good fist of it.

Features like the JLB(Jointless belt technology) are retained to give great high speed stability and superior shock absorption and the MT(Multi tread) technology developed by their Motorsport department, gives it outstanding straight-line traction and increased cornering grip. As we have found more and more with Sports Touring tyres, the grip and feel of these tyres are more akin to Super sport tyres and I must say I struggled to feel the difference.

The tyre peels into bends with very little persuasion and held the line with the minimum of fuss on the Suzuki GSX-R 750 I rode whilst the feel was fluid and at no time felt like it was lumpy or heavy as per “ST” tyres of old.