Magazines from across the pond often take a little while to land on the desk here at Cambrian, but the recently arrived February/March 2017 issue of Sport Rider was certainly worth the wait.
Also tucked away amongst the pages was a review of Pirelli’s latest hypersport tyre, the Diablo Rosso III which was launched in 2016.
Having already put them to test on the track Sport Rider were keen to see how they’d fair on the road, and here’s what they had to say:
“Right off the bat, the new Rosso IIIs exhibited a much quicker steering response than the old Rosso IIs, with turn-in effort much easier. Overall stability despite the quicker steering was excellent, especially in fast transitions where we had to flick the bike from full lean on one side to the other.
Bump compliance was noticeably smoother running straight up over highway imperfections, and while the sidewalls are noticeably stiffer than the Rosso IIs, the increased rigidity helps with feel and feedback rather than making the ride too stiff and chatter-prone. We did notice the decrease in feel that Gilbert voiced with the front tyre as you approach maximum lean; granted you have to be riding pretty aggressively for it to occur, and we didn’t suffer any loss of traction.
In fact, overall grip at all lean angles was excellent, with the rear especially demonstrating superb traction characteristics even when driving off a corner aggressively. Warm-up is very quick, even during colder conditions, and we surprisingly got to do some wet-weather testing in Southern California; the Rosso IIIs performed well, with slightly less overall grip than the Rosso IIs (to be expected considering the smaller amount of tread grooves). And to top it off, the wear rates of the Rosso IIIs were very good, with plenty of tyre still remaining after three months and 2,000 miles of hard riding.”
Check out the range of Diablo Rosso III sizes here.
