Metzeler Roadtec 02 Tyre Test at the IoM
Test by Rennie Scaysbrook
It’s a question I know you’ve asked yourself at least once before. Do I have the right tyres on my bike? Tyres are by their very nature a compromise — perhaps save for out-and-out racing slicks — and when it comes to street tyres, each manufacturer tries to offer a product that’ll handle most situations you can throw at it and make the compromises as small as possible.
The question comes charging back into my mind as I enter The Gooseneck on the Isle of Man TT Mountain Course. The last time I rounded this corner was during lap two of the 2023 Senior TT on the Kibosh Racing BMW. The Isle of Man was in gorgeous summer bloom, I was on Metzeler Racetec slicks, and life was about as good as it ever had been during my previous 40 years on this planet. Ten minutes later, however, my race was done after a gearbox malfunction, but that’s a story for another time.
This time, however, I’m on a Kawasaki H2 SX, my absolute favourite sport touring machine you can buy today. And it’s wet. Not just wet, absolutely-freaking-pissing-down wet. It’s freezing cold, blustery, utterly shithouse conditions for doing anything but… tyre testing.
Underneath me is Metzeler’s new Roadtec 02, the first tyre the German/Italian giant claims is actually a two-in-one street tyre that will handle supersport riding speeds as well as it does wet conditions.
Metzeler’s reasoning behind this claim is the grooves that close together on the last third of either side of the tyre during high-force/cornering-load riding, effectively turning the sport touring tyre into a near slick with an extra six percent of uncut tyre on the ground.
Called Dynatread, this adaptive tread design works the other way when cornering loads are not as high, expanding the grooves to give you six per cent more water-draining capability and maintaining its original sport touring-specific ethos. However, the tread pattern does look suspiciously like that from the Sportec M7 RR street supersport tyre, so I suspect its more angled to sporty boys and girls.
Dynatread is quite a clever design, and from the handlebars, the grip levels in conditions similar to that of riding through a carwash are pretty astounding. I’ll admit to not pushing anywhere near what this tyre is capable of — I managed to avoid Nobles Hospital during my time as a TT rider and have no intention of making a trip there while on a simple tyre test.
Yet, the front tyre has enough water drainage that I don’t mind wicking it up slightly and pushing the front-end into Guthrie’s Memorial — named after former TT winner Jimmie Guthrie who perished in the 1937 German Grand Prix — and a little further onto the Mountain Mile where, thankfully, Metzeler has closed down the road and I can use both lanes of tarmac, even though I can hardly see where I’m going.
Metzeler’s Roadtec 02 is the second new offering in a year after the Roadtec 01 SE, which debuted in 2023. That tyre is a revision of the Roadtec 01, which has been on the market for the best part of a decade. The SE is devoted more to the sport-turing rider who will tour more than sport. The 02 is devoted more to the sport-turing rider who will sport more than tour. I suspect that’s a lot of you, and I’ll include myself in that lot.
Like so many of Metzeler’s street tyres, the 02 runs a full silica compound on both the front and rear and the rear runs Metzeler’s Cap&Base dual compound structure with a redesigned harder centre for higher mileage and more high-speed stability.
The tyres are created using 43 per cent bio-based and recycled material and Metzeler also claims higher hysteresis in all conditions. What is hysteresis, I hear you ask? Hysteresis is the tyre’s rolling resistance rating relative to the amount of energy lost through heat when it flexes under load.
More resistance/hysteresis means the tyre will heat up faster and bite into the tarmac harder, thus giving you more confidence when you crank the bike over on its side. However, too much hysteresis will mean the tyre will deform too much, lose its shape, and give you a spongy feeling and slow steering. Like almost everything in life, it’s a compromise.
A goal for any sport touring tyre that will surely see more than a few wet kilometres is to have the ability to retain a decent level of heat and get said heat into the carcase quickly and effectively. Street tyres need to heat up fast and stay warm, and I have absolutely no idea if this 02 tyre has achieved a measurable gain over the 01 SE (the tyre Metzeler used to make all kinds of claims about increased grip, faster turn-in, etc) simply because it was so damn wet and cold and even a lit cigarette wasn’t warm.
However, compared to the Roadtec 01 SE, the 02 allows more lean angle and a higher brake pressure with less ABS intervention, although Metzeler didn’t elaborate as to what bikes they were testing to come up with that claim.
Modern ABS systems have taken a massive step forward since the advent of the Inertial Measurement Unit a decade ago, and less intervention is always a good thing because it means you can make emergency avoidance steering inputs without the ABS pulsing at the brake lever. Most of the development of this tyre was carried out at Metzeler/Pirelli’s Pergusa facility in Sicily, and while racetracks can provide repeatable results due to conditions that rarely change, it’s the street where a tyre like this is made for, which is why I think the 02’s tread design has been lifted pretty closely from the M7 RR’s.
The wet performance of the 02 rear is probably its biggest selling point. On a bike like the brutish H2 SX with all that supercharged horsepower, the rear offered exceptional levels of grip and allowed me to start getting on the gas harder than I’d normally do in the wet in second and third gear at mid-revs. This doesn’t sound like much but bear in mind this is where most of the SX’s thrust is, and when you’ve got that much go in your right hand, things happen very quickly, especially in the wet.
With the Kawasaki Traction Control system down to level three of nine, the H2 had plenty of opportunity to light up the rear, yet, for the most part, the rear Roadtec 02 kept everything on the straight and narrow. I won’t BS you and tell you there were no snaky rear moments, there were (it was the TT course, after all), but the confidence I got from the rear during that bitterly cold lap was impressive.
I’m going to reserve final judgement on the 02s until I get a set on a long-termer a little later in the year, but the initial feelings are quite positive. As this is a sport touring tyre, one of the biggest factors that will determine its validity is how many kilometres you’ll get out of a set.
Metzeler didn’t have a direct answer for me on this question at the launch, but depending on how ham-fisted you are with the throttle (and you keep the right pressure in your tyres), I’d expect between 6,000-10,000 km out of a set. If you want more mileage and want to stay with the white elephant brand, go for the 01 SE, where 10K kilometres should be expected.
But for a few and very, very cold kilometres, the Metzeler Roadtec 02’s performed exceptionally. A good note is although the conditions were absolutely shocking, no one from a wide variety of testers from across the world ended up on their heads, and that rarely happens at a press launch in the rain. Score one for Metzeler on that…
Metzeler Roadtec 02 front tyre fitment chat
- 120/70 ZR 17 M/C (58W) TL
- 110/80 R 19 M/C 59V TL ADV
- 120/70 ZR 19 M/C 60W TL ADV
Metzeler Roadtec 02 rear tyre fitment chart
- 160/60 ZR 17 M/C (69W) TL
- 180/55 ZR 17 M/C (73W) TL
- 190/50 ZR 17 M/C (73W) TL
- 190/55 ZR 17 M/C (75W) TL
- 190/55 ZR 17 M/C (75W) TL (O)
- 150/70 R 17 M/C 69V TL ADV
- 170/60 ZR 17 M/C 72W TL ADV
