Continental SportAttack 5 Motorcycle Tires Review

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Continental SportAttack 5 Motorcycle Tires Review

Confidence means everything on the track, and it's critically important on the street too. (Photos by Kevin Wing)

Recently I spent the day at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway in Desert Center, California, to test the new Continental SportAttack 5 tires. My mission? To see if Continental's newest supersport tire could serve as a true trackday offering while still performing all the safety and longevity duties of a street tire after the weekend is over and the fantasy of being a professional racer fades into the background.

Now, if you are at the dentist and need a snappy summary while the Lidocaine kicks in, I'll tell it like this: Think of the new ContiSportAttack 5 as a high-performance track tire that also happens to be street legal. That means you can spoon a set on your bike, ride to the track, pound laps all day, and then ride home. There you go. Take care and good luck with that root canal.

The fifth-gen ContiSportAttack takes an already proven supersport tire and elevates it to the next level.

For the rest of you in the room, Continental markets these tires as 80% street use and only 20% track, but no matter how little track riding you plan to do, the thresholds on a racetrack are so much higher that the tires must be capable of hammering lap after glorious lap if they advertise that they can perform in that environment at all. Simply put, they must get to operating temperatures rapidly without tire warmers, manage stupid lean angles at very high speeds, and handle high sustained heat without getting greasy or losing composure. For a dedicated track tire, sure, but a street tire? That's a bit trickier.

When you find yourself away from the track while living your regular 9-5, these same tires must perform almost immediately after pulling out of the garage and remain sticky and capable no matter how much speeding up or slowing down they encounter on your trip to Applebee's. They also need to withstand a gazillion heat cycles without losing their pliability. And maybe most importantly, they can't waste away after a thousand miles. Basically, ContiSportAttack 5s must perform competently in two totally divergent environments. Not easy and not common in a tire offering.

After covering some technical details on the new ContiSportAttack 5 at the rider's meeting, we suited up and broke into our respective groups for some track sessions. I started on a Honda CBR1000RR, with tire pressures set to OEM specifications. I was at this very racetrack with race slicks and tire warmers just a few short weeks ago, so I was worried that I might inadvertently expect too much grip right out the gate and have a little mishap. Lucky for me, that was not the case. In fact, I felt very comfortable by Turn 5. Not just because the tires stuck like glue, but because they felt grounded. What I mean is that the tires had traction but also seemed to absorb the racetrack underneath me, making my line smoother than the track suggested when I looked at it through my helmet visor. That built massive confidence by the end of my first session.

While waiting for my next track session, I chatted with Continental's technical gurus and learned about the science that went into the ContiSportAttack 5. First off, these tires have a patented mold technology called Traction Skin that enables the tires to go full-send with almost no scrub-in. Next, they are infused with Black Chili Compound, which is a blend of special synthetic rubbers that enable the tires to reach operating temperatures rapidly. This technology is so sensitive that tires manufactured with this compound must be produced exclusively in Continental's plant in Korbach, Germany.

From the word "go" the ContiSportAttack 5s felt compliant, agile, and planted. Part of their secret sauce is Continental's MultiZone Belt.

The heavy hitter in the performance game is the MultiZone Belt, which is tight and close together in the middle of the tire, then spreads out and creates larger gaps as the belt moves towards the edges. The best way I can describe the feeling is if you imagine having OEM pressures in your tire when you are upright, but then the pressures begin to drop as the motorcycle gains lean angle and moves closer to the edges of the tire. You get snappy direction changes (because we have higher OEM pressures) followed by far softer edges (less steel belt material) that provide compliance, a flatter contact patch, and that amazing "grounded" feeling I mentioned. Nice.

For the next session I hopped on a Suzuki GSX-8TT, and I gave the tires almost no warmup time before dragging my pucks around the track. I know that's not the safe play here, but the tires felt ready and willing, so I twisted the throttle accordingly. I pushed harder than in the first session, carrying a bit more speed everywhere and braking considerably harder and later. Still, I never experienced any loss of control out of turns under heavy throttle or any indication that traction was going away while death-gripping the front brake lever, even though the late morning temperatures jogged into the 90s.

The bottom line? I would buy these tires without hesitation because I pushed them exceedingly hard and grew to trust them right out of the box. The fact that they heated up quickly and provided high performance trackday levels of grip through multiple tanks of gas means they will have no struggles making any canyon blast a sensational (and safe) one for me. I could not determine how many miles they will last before needing to be replaced, but I know from Continental's technical data that they far exceed every performance metric of the ContiSportAttack 4, including longevity, and that tire lands somewhere around 3,000 miles before giving up the ghost. Is that enough life expectancy for a fast-heating, super sticky, well-grounded, track-capable supersport tire that I can ride to work day after day? Yes, absolutely.

See all of Rider's tire reviews here.

Continental SportAttack 5 tires are available in a range of sizes for 17-inch wheels, and pricing starts at $279.95.

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