Grip                                                                                                                                                           

Being the impatient guy that I am, I want my tires sticky and I want that now. From the moment I fire up that bike towards the first corner, my concern is grip and warm-up times. The previous ME Z3's were pretty good at warming up reasonably quick; the latest Sportec M-1 is significantly better.

Obviously there is a period between a cold tire and a fully warmed up one, the new Sportec offers more grip, quicker. Quicker grip quickest is what we like. This quick warm-up time is the result of using state of the art Silica-Silan in the tread area of the tire, those previously mentioned belts conduct heat throughout the whole tire and wet weather adhesion benefits too from this Silica usage.
 


On the street ride it's hard not to get carried away with excessive speed, not good, especially on a strange bike in a strange State, in a land far, far away. Cycle News' Blake Connor ran a great and brisk pace from the off and it seemed only fair that I hook on to his tail end, him being the local and all that. Problem was, I misjudged the inherent "danger" of a small stream crossing and proceeded to tip over at walking pace on the slickest moss imaginable, embarrassing myself by both taking a soggy, but fully leather-clad, bath and damaging the casing on the R6 so badly that it leaked fluid. With a snigger behind their hands the other magazine "professionals" rode off without me. Game over.

Tread pattern is very distinctive and for good reason. Two things at play here are negative and positive tread areas. Negative tread is the groovy, treaded grooves. These help you move water and prevent aquaplaning. Positive tread is groovy too, but in a slicker way, with more lean angle offering more rubber… Yeah, I thought you'd like that.

Street Performance Metzeler supplied us with a "herd" of sportbikes ranging from Yamaha's, Kawasaki's and Aprilia's. We were let loose on a 130 mile street ride ending at an afternoon at the Streets of Willow Raceway. My weapon of choice was a Yamaha R6, a good and reasonably comfortable canyon carving machine and perfect for faster track work. At a medium to fast pace on the street, the tire offered no surprises. On the occasional dirty back roads I was subjected to some serious rooster tails from the rider in front, so they were plenty sticky too. It's impossible to test a tire properly on public roads, but it did everything I asked, right down to knee drag angles (tut, tut) and especially if running hot and heavy into an unfamiliar corner, trailing brakes and all.

Now, when the Metzeler "chase truck" turned up, and after checking my well being, they gave me a brand new Aprilia Mille to continue my journey. Isn't life grand? Unfortunately magnetic tank bags and plastic gas tanks are almost as bad a match as moss and rubber so I memorized the next turn off and had 25.2 miles to catch the rest of the riders before I got lost. Did I catch them? Of course I did! Would have been a crappy story otherwise. I rode like a (wet) man possessed and if you know the Lockwood Valley Road I saw some "air" that would have rivaled Jeremy McGrath. I really liked these Sportec tires; I was riding angry yet the tires calmed things down.