Interview – V Sivaramakrishnan, CTO and Dy COO, Eurogrip Tyres | “Radial construction for a bike tyre works very well if you go lower on the aspect ratios”

V Sivaramakrishnan, CTO and Dy COO, Eurogrip Tyres, talks about tyre technology.

Interviewed By: Joshua Varghese

There is a noticeable block pattern in the SCR tyres but you have chosen to go in the opposite direction for the STR tyres. Why is it so?

The reason is the weight of the bikes. When you have such small blocks for tyres made for heavy bikes, you tend to have more of uneven wear in the tyres because of the heaviness of the bikes. So you need to have a rigid pattern construction to make good use of the lateral forces which the bike will generate. At the same time, you need to give the off-road performance. So, you have very wide grooves and big blocks. That’s the reason why these two patterns are different.

Some of your competitors have tyre patterns that go horizontally across the width of the tyre. Will you also be looking at that pattern in the future?

That is the next in series of the Trail. We will do the 70:30 (road/off-road orientation), which is called the Trailhound Wild series and which is this year’s work. We will see it very soon, some time in 2026.

In your STR portfolio, the 90/90 tyre has no radial. Why is it so?

None of the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) use a radial construction for a higher aspect ratio tyre. It comes from a simple technological limitation of the size itself. As you know, 90/90 means a 90 section width with a 90 aspect ratio. With these dimensions, the benefits of a radial construction are not very well extracted because of the limitation of the size itself. Radial construction for a bike tyre works very well if you go lower on the aspect ratios. So, probably a 100/80 or a 110-70, those kind of size dimensions will have higher benefits with the radial construction.