Nowadays we use computerized 3D and auto-cad exclusively, but these original drawings were hand rendered! It showed us that the DT tires had some deep history, roots that connected what we were doing at the time to a lost era. “When we transitioned from DT2 to DT3 several years ago we found some old mold drawings, hand-drawn stuff, which was really a blast from the past. “There was some interesting history to the DT project,” Bell said. One of those Dunlop men was Lead Design Engineer Shawn Bell, who’d been with the company 15 years and who’d been involved in the DT2-to-DT3 transition in 2014-’15. Talk of the need for a new-generation Dunlop flat track tire dates to 2015, when Lock first joined AMA Pro Racing as a consultant, but discussions took on more urgency in late 2017 and early 2018, with Buckley and Lock, who became AFT’s CEO in 2016, expanding the conversation to AFT’s competition department and Dunlop engineers. You’ve also got new racetracks on the circuit, some of which are pretty demanding and some that make it extremely difficult for one tire to cover, capability-wise. You’ve also got a bunch of Kawasakis and Yamahas in the mix now, and probably some all-new twins coming for 2020 or 2021 from other manufacturers. In the twins class alone you’ve got new Harley-Davidson XG750Rs and Indian FTR750s, which are pretty different from the XR750s that’d been the staple for so many years. “And with all that change came the need for a new-generation tire for the series. “Professional flat track racing in America has changed a lot over the last few years under Michael Lock’s leadership,” says Dunlop Senior Vice President Mike Buckley, a guy who’s helped manage Dunlop for nearly 30 years in the U.S. Dunlop has been the spec tire supplier for flat track racing for decades. One tire has had to do all this safely and without failure, over and over, weekend after weekend, year after year.īut after so many years and so many changes in the professional flat track world over the last handful of seasons, with new motorcycles, new rules, new technology and new racetracks, change was bound to come in AFT’s spec-tire formula, and now it has. One tire has had to do this on a shockingly wide range of race tracks-ultra-fast miles and half-miles, and medium- and slower-speed short tracks and TTs-with a dizzying array of surfaces and conditions: hard, soft, clay, pea gravel, loose cushion, bumpy, smooth, rocky, sandy, wet, dry and everything in between, including a little tri-oval asphalt at Daytona. The DT3 actually morphed from the Goodyear Eagle DT2, which itself came from the DT1, which began life as a roadracing rain tire and debuted in the late 1970s on dirt track machines ridden by guys with names like “King Kenny” Roberts.īut with the introduction of the all-new Dunlop DT4, which takes over from the DT3 as the official tire of American Flat Track, that wholesale change has finally happened, and we have the inside scoop on its development.īefore digging into the details surrounding the DT4, consider for a moment the wide range of performance a top-shelf dirt track tire like the DT3 has had to offer over the years: One tire has had to provide a high degree of traction, stability, feedback and durability on a wide range of motorcycles, from 300-plus-pound/100-horsepower twins to 200-plus-pound/60-horsepower singles. Hard to believe, but it’s been decades since there was a wholesale redesign of the world’s most well-known dirt track tire, and the tire used on all racing motorcycles in American Flat Track competition: Dunlop’s DT3. Many of the top racers in AFT were able to add their input in the development of the new Dunlop DT4 race tire. ![]() With the all-new DT4, Dunlop remakes, replaces and improves the legendary-and four-decade-old-DT1/DT2/DT3 dirt track tire.
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