The K3 compound of the new Racetec RR is Metzeler’s street-oriented version of their latest treaded race rubber, for fast road and occasional track day riding.
Developed and honed on some of the world’s fastest road race circuits, it’s more race oriented K1 & K2 brothers are used by riders such as Guy Martin and Ian Hutchinson at the Isle of Man TT and the Ulster GP.
In the September 2015 edition of Performance Bikes magazine, editor Matt Wildee gives his opinions on the set he has just worn out on his long term Panigale S from Ducati:
“After 1000 miles of road and track riding, I’ve been impressed. On the road they warm up well, they offered more stability than the tired OE Supercorsas and for such extreme tyres don’t feel out of place at sub-100mph speeds.
On the track they worked very well – RRs are a lovely, neutral tyre that give a huge amount of feedback and enough feel from the front-end to run in deep on the brakes. They require a nice, consistent bar pressure during the turn-in phase and drop in with predictability.
When you start really pushing hard, the 196bhp of the Panigale can overwhelm the rear, but that isn’t surprising – no other bike has the same power and torque. But the rear broke away with such a progressive nature that it was actually fun and encouraged me to lay big, fat darkies without seeming to lose any time. A single track day finished the rear tyre off, but Silverstone is hard on tyres – with long, fast corners where you’re hard on the gas meaning localised heat build-up. But they tyre still worked well when it looked shagged. It just moved around a little more. On any other track I’d expect to get at least two trackdays from a rear and probably four from the front. For road riding I’d expect 2 – 3,000 miles from a rear.
With these being road compound I didn’t need to use any warmers and the tyres were hot and grippy within two laps of Silverstone’s 1.64-mile National Circuit.”
Find out more about the Racetec RR K3 here – available to the UK trade from Cambrian Tyres!
