AGV Backmarker: Learning to Love Las Vegas

A couple of weeks ago, I was flown to Las Vegas and put up in a luxurious resort so that I could spend a day trying out the latest Dunlop street tir

e for sport bikes, the Sportmax Q2.

While I waited for my baggage at the Vegas luggage carousel, I tried to spot the hookers and Ultimate Fighters arriving to ply their trades in the casinos. It’s harder and harder to tell them apart from Orange County high school seniors flying in for after-grad parties. Breast enhancement, steroids, tattoos… they’re not just for grown-ups any more.

My phone buzzed; it was a limo driver who’d been sent to pick me up. “I’m in a black Escalade with ‘Green Valley Ranch’ written on it,” he told me.

I got to the hotel with a couple of hours to kill. As I lounged by the pool, lying face-down on a daybed with a towel over my head for shade, I was disturbed only by the beautiful cocktail waitress who leaned down to put her face near mine and coyly ask if there was anything I needed.

Only a cold shower, thanks. That evening, a busload of journalists was ferried from the hotel to another sprawling casino complex across town, where the new tire was introduced at a VIP bowling alley.

Even though Pro Bowlers Association tournaments are broadcast on ESPN, which is more than you can say for AMA Pro Road Racing, I have trouble describing bowling as a sport—mainly because I don’t think real sports’ playing fields are surrounded by ashtrays and places to put your beer.

Still, bowling has more to offer that other non-sports like golf, curling, or snooker. Mainly, its advantage is that unlike those other games, bowling is fun even if you’re lousy at it. Think about it: what’s the best thing that can happen in bowling, a perfect performance? It’s a strike, right? Well, even the rankest amateur will occasionally get one. By contrast, a rank amateur is never going to hop on a motorcycle and by sheer luck match one of Mladin’s Superpole times. And what’s the worst that can happen? No matter how crappy you bowl, after a few seconds that mechanical arm sweeps down and, deus ex machina! All evidence of your screw-up is wiped away, and in moment you’ll have the chance to redeem yourself. (Quite unlike being a motorcycle racer, where if you screw up, the evidence is carted in, in a crash truck, for all to see—a motorcycle as rounded-off and dusty as a sugar donut. Then, while the other riders are all nominally sympathetic, you know they’re really thinking, Better you than me, and your crew chief says, “As long as you’re okay…” while thinking, I should hit that dumb-ass with this wrench.)

I also like bowling because I utterly dominated my “foursome,” including at least one person I knew would thoroughly spank me the next day at the track.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, because the order went: Dunlop presentation, buffet dinner, bowling. Tires have always been—literally—one of the black arts of motorcycle development. When we go to a new-bike launch, we’re often shown disassembled motors. We can see the changes in components and understand the difference in materials, for example the difference between steel valves and titanium ones. That’s not the case for the microscopic carbon-black particles, silica compounds, and polymers that make up tire rubber.

Over the years, I’ve tried to get a better understanding of the way tire engineers go about designing new tires, which after all are an absolutely rate-limiting factor in our sport’s relentless pursuit of improved performance. I’ve usually been stymied either because the people who create our tires are secretive or because they assume I’m too stupid to understand their jobs (either of which would be perfectly reasonable positions for them to take).

The mystery inherent in such a critical component is only deepened when, during tire tests, top riders test visibly identical tires with radically different results or when, over the course of a race weekend, two nominally identical tires perform differently for the same rider. So I was interested to hear that Dunlop had brought one of their engineers to the launch who specializes in Finite Element Analysis and computer modeling. Apparently, the company modeled the new tire and decided what they wanted it to be like, only to realize that the desired tire couldn’t be manufactured. Dunlop actually had to invent a new way to make the Q2.

“What,” I asked a Dunlop rep, “had to be done differently?”

“Uh, we can’t tell you.”

Yeah well, I withheld my secrets of bowling success, too.

Miguel Duhamel, long one of the Dunlop faithful, was bowling in the lane beside me. I was kind of hoping that he’d ride with us, but he didn’t. I think he was only there because Ken Vreeke had promised him a free dinner and he still has a home in Vegas. (Mon Dieu, Miguel, pour quois?) I would have enjoyed chatting with him about the state of the current AMA Pro championship, and finding out what’s next for him, career-wise. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to him, so all I know is that the legendary Quebecois isn’t about to embark on a second career on the Pro Bowling Tour.

Dunlop’s presentation laid out the role of the Q2 in the Sportmax family. It replaces the four-year-old Sportmax Qualifier. On the scale of more-to-less racy, the top Dunlop tire is the DOT-legal Sportmax GP-A. Dunlop makes those tires in its UK race shop, and after Jim Allen and his gang get the tires needed for the AMA Pro paddock, any extra production goes out to distributors. That tire’s DOT-legal but not really recommended for street use.

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