How Do You Make A High-Performance Tire Like The New Dunlop Q4? We Talk To People Who Did It To Find Out

You've probably heard it said that today's street tires are better than race tires were a few decades ago. If that's the case—and if tires are anywhere near as straightforward as they seem—how are they being improved? How does a manufacturer figure out which direction to take its product, what goes into making a tire better, and how do you know if the bar has actually been raised?

I had the chance to pose these and other questions to Dunlop's Director of Marketing Mike Manning and Tire Design Engineer John Robinson at the launch of Dunlop's new Q4 trackday tire. Even as a guy who thinks he knows a fair bit about tires and how they're made, I was surprised by some of Manning's and Robinson's answers. Read on to learn a little more about the effort that was put into the Q4 and how Dunlop goes about its business.

How do you determine if a tire is actually better?

There's a lot that goes into figuring out if a tire is better. We do a lot of track testing, and ultimately, with the Q4, lap times were the yardstick. The thing is though, a tire can be fast but also difficult to ride, and that's not a great tire. The reports we get from the riders have about 10 categories, from linearity to ride comfort. We take all of those things into account during the development process. It's as much art as it is science. —John Robinson

I’ve heard it said that all the traction comes from the rubber compounds and the tread is just there for water evacuation and aesthetics. Is that true?

Maybe for some manufacturers! We do a lot of pattern prototyping. We cure pure-cavity tires, which are slicks, and then we hand cut the patterns. To eliminate all the variables except the tread, we cut our competitor’s tread patterns, our existing patterns, and the prototype pattern, and then our riders test them all.

There's an aesthetic element to [the tread design] for sure, but it's performance driven. On the Q4 the tread is basically just getting out of its own way. Those long narrow grooves, shaped correctly, they don't do any of the negative things you get with treaded tires—they don't wear poorly. And they're still long enough to move through the contact patch to evacuate water. —Mike Manning

What motivated Dunlop to create a tire as focused as the Q4?

With any tire, we start by looking at the market to see how people are using our existing products and what they like and don't like about it. That's what guides us. When we had the Q3 the only things we heard were that more mileage would be good and that the Pirelli SuperCorsa SP had better overall performance. With those two opposing objectives [durability and traction], we decided to proceed with two products. So we started to figure out how to put more mileage in the Q3 to make the Q3+, and we did it without worrying about grip since we were also developing the Q4 as a premium performance tire. We basically split the product line and added a subset to achieve what we were after. —Mike Manning

How much time was spent on the compound versus other aspects of the tire?

Compound development took a lot of time. With the Q4 it was a four- or five-week turnaround on a prototype and we’ve been working on it for about a year and a half, so between the six and 10 iterations per tire.

You know, some stuff that looks ideal on paper or in the lab just wasn't the best at the track. Pavement texture—whether the surface is bumpy or smooth—there are so many factors when it comes to how a tire is actually going to work. That's why we always look to lap times, and test at different tracks. —John Robinson

Is there anything that’s really different on the new Q4 versus earlier versions, any way you guys are pushing the envelope?

The front is a traditional cut-belt construction, but the rear is totally different. With the Q4 we're using the Jointless Tread technology like on the MotoAmerica race tires.

JLT [Jointless Tread] is basically 3-D printing for tires, it lets me apply the rubber exactly where I want it and tune the thickness down to about a tenth of a millimeter. On a cut-belt tire the tread is one flap of rubber that gets rolled and pressed onto the carcass. With JLT there's a gear pump and two nozzles that lay continuous beads of rubber onto the carcass to build up the tread, then it goes into the mold. There are two arms and they start from the shoulders and wind on a 25mm strip of rubber, it takes about 25 to 30 revolutions per side. —John Robinson

How are Dunlop’s efforts any different than what Bridgestone or Pirelli or any other company is doing? Are you all just using the same tools to do your jobs?

Well, for starters, we’re the only company that manufactures tires in the US [in Buffalo, New York]. We’re engaged with the market, and we develop our tires here for this market and the way people ride in America. Other manufacturers have global tires for all markets—it’s one model for the whole world, even if it doesn’t suit the riding style or bikes in another country. This Q4 won’t be in Europe, and we don’t get the tires they develop over there, so we’re different in that we build for a distinct market.

On top of all that, the guy designing the tires [John Robinson] rides trackdays, he's experienced. John and the other engineers sit about 100 feet from the tire-building machine, and they can walk over and build a tire to test something. From a customer point of view, I think it matters that we're developing and building tires here and have control over the process from the start to finish. —Mike Manning

It seems like tire compounds keep getting better. They’re more versatile, more durable, and have more grip than before. How do you improve the rubber itself?

When it comes to tires we've got the carcass construction, the profile, the compound, and the tread. Just looking at the compound, there are four ingredients: polymer, carbon black, oils, and sulfur. We can change the ratios to change the characteristics of the tire. We have chemists that are always working on this stuff, trying new recipes and mixtures. Grip is made up of adhesion, mechanical grip, wear when rubber flakes off, and hysteresis. By experimenting with ingredients and ratios we're able to develop compounds that behave and grip the way we want. —John Robinson