Photos and text by Kenn Stamp

After crashing at Homestead during Buell's Inside Pass Track Day and tearing my glove up (but not my hand), I was in need of a new set of track gloves. Of course SHIFT Racing stepped right up and sent me a set of their new Vertex gloves to protect my valuable digits. Since the last gloves they sent me worked so well I had and have no hesitation to wear another pair.

First let's get one thing out in the open.......these gloves are tight. Not so tight that you need to get a larger size than normal, but just tight enough that you need to spend some quality break-in time with these babies. When I first put them on I almost called SHIFT and asked for a larger size.....but I decided to wear them for a few days and see what happened.
After about 2 weeks of wearing them everyday (no honey, I always wear gloves when mowing the lawn) they loosened-up enough that they now fit like a glove (hahaha).

To me being able to move your hand around inside a race glove is not a good thing. I like complete and utter control when I'm pushing it and loose gloves don't give me that feeling. It's kind of like wearing a loose fitting leathers...... they may be more comfortable around the paddock and maybe even on the bike.....but they won't be if you should decide that you need to go horizontal (and vertical and horizontal and vertical, etc..).

SHIFT built the Vertex gloves to withstand the rigors of track use; both on and off the bike. To that end they have included some features that should allow the gloves to have a long life while providing good protection for those occasional off the bike moments.

As you can see the Vertex gloves are a long gauntlet style glove as any track biased glove should be. The Vertex gloves have composite reinforced knuckle protection that looks like a silver carbon fiber. SHIFT also put the same material on the middle two fingers just below the second knuckle. Why only the two middle fingers and not on the two outside fingers I don't know other than it being a styling exercise. An open-back knuckle design adds to the flexibility of the Vertex glove keeping them from getting tighter when you close your fingers around the bars.

SHIFT put a perforated leather panel on the back of the glove up on the gauntlet area. Even though it seems like it would be ineffectual as a cooling system as your sleeve would be under that part of the glove, many, many manufacturers do it. That means that either there really is a benefit or it has become de rigueur in the industry to have them. The Vertex glove also has these little "ram air"scoops on the three fingers as well. Again, not sure if they really work but at least they do look cool and although they are plastic they are tall enough to provide additional protection in case of a crash.

Keeping with the theme of added protection, SHIFT added padding and additional layers of leather to strategic contact points; thumb, palm, and the outside of the little finger. Also on the little finger side of the glove are two patches of what appears to be Kevlar. SHIFT did put a layer of Kevlar into the glove for added abrasion resistance and it appears that they added padding and another contact patch of the stuff to the outside of the glove as well. Now I can hear some of you already; "Kevlar is puncture resistant but doesn't have very good abrasion resistance". Be that as it may, and I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing as I haven't tested the theory myself, any added layering is going to be helpful.

On the palm is a piece of added material that appears to be a brushed leather. This provides copious amounts of grip even in the wet so your hand sliding around on the grips should never be a problem. Keeping with the glove's main design focus as a race glove, there isn't any added padding to the palm area. Once again this is to maintain as much feel as possible between your hands and the bars; a desirable thing that extra "comfort" padding would reduce or eliminate.

One last feature that is very nice is the wrist strap and gauntlet closure. The wrist strap is thin with plenty of velcro to ensure a good fit while the gauntlet closure is very wide with plenty of velcro as well. First thing to do is cinch down the wrist strap and then cinch down the gauntlet closure. Done in this order the wide gauntlet closure will cover the end of the wrist strap helping to ensure that it doesn't come loose and let the glove slide right off.

The only real negative I have experienced with the glove is that they are a little stiffer than I would ultimately like them to be. This may be a feature of having them fully lined with Kevlar and most likely will go away with some more riding time. The stiffness is not terrible but unexpected from SHIFT Racing as other gloves from them have been soft and pliable right out of the "box". I'll try to keep you updated via the forum if or when they seem to loosen-up.
 
The SHIFT Racing Vertex gloves retail for $129.99 and can be bought directly from SHIFT's website.

Let your fingers do the walking over to our Vertex Forum to ask any questions or make any comments about the gloves.