Metzeler SPORTEC 01 & 01 RS Tested At Sydney Motorsport Park

• New SPORTEC 01 combines sporty road performance with quick warm-up and wet-weather ability
• SPORTEC 01 RS adds racing-derived compounds and construction for serious road and track performance
• Tested on everything from an XSR900 to a BMW S1000RR at Sydney Motorsport Park

The opportunity to put Metzeler’s new sports tyres through their paces at the fast and technical Sydney Motorsport Park was one not to be missed. So Paul jumped the ditch to check them out.

I’ve always been a bit of a fan of Metzeler tyres, which only grew stronger when I discovered they’re pretty unique in the tyre space due to the fact they only make motorcycle tyres. Yep, the team are 100 percent focused on producing the round black things that keep you shiny side up.

And now there are two new options sitting at the sporty end of the Metzeler range, with the arrival of the SPORTEC 01 and even more performance-focused SPORTEC 01 RS.

A New Generation Of Sportec

The SPORTEC name has been Metzeler’s supersport family for more than a decade, with tyres such as the M7 RR and, more recently, the M9 RR combining sporty road performance with the ability to deal with the less-than-perfect conditions we regularly encounter in the real world.

The new SPORTEC 01 takes that philosophy another step forward, while the 01 RS pushes much further towards the racetrack.

Rather than being an uncompromising track tyre with just enough tread to make it road legal, the 01 is aimed squarely at sporty road riders. Think sportsbikes, middleweights, powerful nakeds and sporty crossovers where you want plenty of grip and responsive handling but still need a tyre that works when it’s cold, wet or simply being ridden to work.

Metzeler says the goal is supersport levels of grip and precision without sacrificing wet-weather performance, with sizes beginning at 110/70 front and 150/60 rear reflecting the increasingly impressive performance available from smaller-capacity sports machinery.

The SPORTEC 01 RS then turns everything up another notch.

Metzeler describes the RS as the sharpest evolution of the 01, aimed at riders who want maximum road performance but also take their bikes to the track. Available in a 120/70 front and rear sizes starting at 180/55 and running all the way to a 200/60, it’s clearly targeting serious sportsbike and superbike machinery.

Importantly, Metzeler continues to list the M9 RR and RACETEC RR alongside the newcomers, so this isn’t simply a case of one old tyre being replaced by another. Instead, the new 01 family expands and moves the performance envelope of the SPORTEC range.

DYNATREAD – More Rubber When You Need It

Central to both new tyres is Metzeler’s DYNATREAD technology, which first appeared on the ROADTEC 02.

It’s a clever idea because the tread effectively changes its behaviour depending on how hard you’re using the tyre.

At lower loads and speeds, the grooves remain open to help evacuate water and allow tread movement, assisting warm-up and grip in everyday conditions.

Start braking hard or accelerating aggressively and sections of those grooves are designed to compress and partially close under load, effectively increasing the amount of rubber in contact with the road.

So, in simple terms, the harder you push, the more the tread begins behaving like a tyre with fewer grooves and a larger contact patch.

On the front, this is designed to increase stability and grip under hard braking, while under acceleration the tread compresses to maximise traction.

The SPORTEC 01 also uses high-silica dual compounds front and rear, with softer shoulder compounds helping provide grip at lean while maintaining stability through the centre of the tyre. Metzeler has put plenty of emphasis on quick warm-up and wet-weather performance, too – both pretty important attributes for a tyre designed primarily for road riders.

Turning It Up To RS

While the two tyres share the same basic family DNA, the SPORTEC 01 RS isn’t simply an 01 with fewer grooves.

Metzeler has substantially re-engineered the construction and incorporated technology and compounds developed through its road-racing programme, including experience gained at the Isle of Man TT.

Both front and rear use Metzeler’s K2 carbon-black compound in the shoulder areas to maximise grip at lean, with racing-derived base compounds helping speed warm-up and manage temperature when the tyres are being worked hard.

There’s also less tread void than on the standard 01, putting more rubber onto the road or track and shifting the priorities further towards outright dry grip, stability and response.

Construction differs, too, with PET introduced as a structural material at both ends. Up front, two layers of PET are combined with a zero-degree steel belt, while the rear combines PET and nylon with another zero-degree steel belt.

Essentially, the 01 is the versatile sports road tyre of the pair, while the RS sacrifices some of that all-round emphasis in pursuit of significantly greater performance when things get serious.

Which is why Sydney Motorsport Park was going to be a rather appropriate place to try them.

On The Track

It was a warm and sunny SMSP that greeted us, with a mixed fleet of bikes lined up for the assembled Aussie journos – and this one Kiwi – to use to check out the new rubber.

With the SPORTEC 01 fitted to machines including the beautiful Yamaha XSR900 and a brand-new CFMOTO 750SR, the stickier RS rubber was reserved for some serious performance machinery including a couple of BMW S1000RRs and a bright green Kawasaki ZX-10R. This was looking like a good day.

With the morning briefing taking place in a pit garage while the first day of a California Superbike School was happening outside, one of the coaches came in to give us his insight into the new rubber.

Okay, disclaimer here: CSS in Australia and NZ is supported by Metzeler. But you’ve got to think these guys appreciate a good set of tyres, and he showed us two sets he’d already done 16 full sessions on – one of each type – and they were still looking pretty decent. As in, you could probably go and do a heap more sessions on them as long as you weren’t planning on setting lap-record pace.

As you’d expect, he found the SPORTEC 01 RS more suitable for cutting laps on his S1000RR, explaining that he’d dialled the traction control settings right down to make the most of the predictable nature of the track-focused rubber.

The front had offered excellent grip throughout the sessions, while he explained that as the tyres got hotter they remained predictable. They’d reach a level where they would begin to slide but stay consistent rather than suddenly falling off a cliff, before recovering quickly from the heat build-up. He was impressed.

And the fact he could still go out and complete 16 coaching sessions on the standard SPORTEC 01 – essentially a sporty road tyre – gives you an idea of just how capable the new rubber is when asked to do sporty work, while still being designed to deal with normal road conditions and rain.

Building Up

My first laps were on the gorgeous Yamaha XSR900GP fitted with SPORTEC 01s, although I wasn’t expecting to be shepherded out of the garage and positioned at the front of the queue, first on track with a heap of seasoned professional Aussie journos behind me.

I’d been to SMSP a couple of months previously, although those laps had only been on the smaller Southern Circuit. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d ridden the full track.

So, with cold tyres, very little idea where I was going and a heap of Aussies chomping at my heels, I fired the Yamaha triple into life, made sure I was in Sport mode and headed down the slip road onto the fast and undulating circuit.

I’m a stickler for making sure my tyres are warm before upping the pace on track. I can’t recall the number of times I’ve been at a trackday and seen the flags come out on lap one because someone has got carried away on cold rubber.

But with the SPORTEC 01 designed for quick warm-up thanks to its road bias, combined with the fact the temperature was already in the mid-20s, by the time I came out of the long sweeper onto SMSP’s incredible downhill straight I held the XSR’s throttle to the stop and decided it was time to up the pace.

A couple of the other journos had slipped past me, which was great as they could show me where to go. I just needed to keep them within reach so I didn’t lose sight of their lines.

Turn 1 at SMSP is a terrifying experience, especially if you haven’t done it for a while.

With the downhill start/finish straight meaning you’re in top gear and essentially flat-out on whatever you’re riding, the idea is to roll off, sit up, drop down a gear and throw it in before getting hard on the throttle through the corner.

It sort of slingshots you towards Turn 2. Get it right and it’s a buzz. Get it wrong and things could get really bad.

With the Sportecs, in my mind at least, probably not yet up to maximum operating temperature, I grabbed the Yamaha’s front brake to scrub some extra speed before throwing the XSR in and dialling the throttle back on. The tyres didn’t miss a beat.

With the slingshot through Turn 1 making the run to the Turn 2 hairpin suddenly feel very short, a hard pull on the lever while kicking down through the gearbox using the sweet quickshifter had me thinking about DYNATREAD doing its thing – those grooves in the front tyre being compressed under braking and putting more rubber against the track.

With the rest of the lap featuring plenty of elevation change, blind corners and a particularly tricky off-camber, long, sweeping hairpin, it’s certainly a circuit that asks plenty of the tyres. And it wasn’t until the end of my session that the rear 01 started offering the first signs of movement. Nothing dramatic. But as my confidence grew and I became more aggressive with the throttle while cranked over, the SPORTEC was beginning to let me know we were getting into it.

There was nothing alarming about it – just a little communication from the rear while it continued to do a bloody good job of supplying drive for what is essentially a road tyre.

Time For The RS

My next session was aboard a Yamaha R9 wearing the sportier RS hoops, but it was during my final session – when I was assigned one of the school’s BMW S1000RRs fitted with SPORTEC 01 RS rubber – that I really got to experience what this new tyre was about.

By now I’d figured out where the track went, but with us sharing track time with riders completing the California Superbike School, making the most of a 200hp superbike on seriously sticky rubber without terrifying some of the students was going to be a challenge. Oh well. Time to see what we could achieve.

With the BMW’s electronics set to Race Pro 1, nothing quite prepares you for the sheer bonkers performance available from a motorcycle you can buy straight off a showroom floor.

And with the Sportecs underneath me, I could make the most of that performance with the confidence that the tyres were absolutely up to the job.

What struck me most – and the thing I wrote down immediately after the session – was that I didn’t feel the need to question what the front tyre was doing. At all.

The front complemented the lightning-fast reflexes of the BMW while offering plenty of confidence when leant over with your knee on the floor, waiting for the opportunity to unleash that vicious four-cylinder performance.

It was all that power that had me thinking more about the rear than the front, but again it simply got on with the job.

With the students tending to gravitate together into groups of riders and coaches, I regularly found myself diving into corners on completely the wrong trajectory as I tried to maintain a decent gap from students resolutely sticking to the crosses the school tapes onto the track to show them where to position themselves.

A few times I found myself heading into a left-hand hairpin carrying a heap of speed hard on the left of the track while the students were out to the right. I couldn’t have been in a worse position if I’d tried.

Thankfully, the SPORTEC 01 RS simply didn’t care. It let me throw the BMW onto its side, arc around the corner and get back onto the gas without missing a beat. They were seriously impressive.

I’m certainly not up to the tyre-shredding ability of the CSS coaches, but at a fast trackday pace the SPORTEC 01 RS performed exceptionally well. And considering it’s still a road-legal tyre you can ride to the track on, that’s arguably the whole point.

Who Are They For?

If you’re riding a superbike and like going fast on the road as well as taking your bike to the occasional trackday, the SPORTEC 01 RS is the obvious one of the pair.

As we discovered, you don’t necessarily need tyre warmers, although you’ll still need to give them the opportunity to get properly up to temperature. Once they’re working, however, there’s enough performance there to let you enjoy the bike you’ve spent your hard-earned cash on without wondering whether the rubber is up to the task.

And you shouldn’t automatically assume they’ll be destroyed after a day at the track, either. The CSS coach’s tyres were pretty convincing evidence of that.

For the sporty road rider on anything from the latest crop of middleweights to sportsbikes, sporty nakeds and faster crossovers, the standard SPORTEC 01 is arguably the more relevant tyre.

The wider range of sizes reinforces that, starting with a 110/70 front and 150/60 rear and extending all the way through to the 200/55 rear used by serious performance machinery.

There’s more tread, quick warm-up, the promise of serious wet-weather performance – something we thankfully didn’t get the opportunity to test in Sydney – and clever DYNATREAD technology that effectively gives you more rubber on the road when you start asking more of the tyre.

After riding both around one of Australia’s fastest circuits, the biggest compliment I can give them is probably a simple one.

I spent very little time thinking about the tyres. And when you’re riding something like an S1000RR hard around Sydney Motorsport Park, that’s exactly what you want.

For further details head to www.forbesanddavies.co.nz or visit to your local dealer.