Sprint Filter P08 Air Filter for Road & Track – BMW S 1000 R (2021–2026) PM171S

By Sprint Filter's own account, this is the most used air filter in MotoGP, Moto3, World Superbike, Supersport and Superstock. That is the manufacturer speaking about itself rather than an independent count, and worth taking for what it is: evidence about how race teams service an intake, not a promise to a road naked. What a team gets from a washable element is a part that can be put back to a known condition between sessions. That property comes home with the PM171S; the lap times stay where they were.

Key Features

• One layer of dry polyester weave, no oil anywhere upstream of the throttle bodies
• Rated 5,050 l/m²/sec through an 80 µm aperture, the road and track cloth of the range
• Polyester thread from ø 22 microns; filtration happens at the weave, not at the fibre
• About double the working area of other performance media, in the standard frame
• Drops in where the paper element came out — nothing cut, nothing repositioned, no remap
• Cleaned instead of thrown away, built to outlast the service book, two-year warranty

What a race team uses one for

In a paddock the air element is a serviceability item, pulled, cleared with an air line and refitted inside a session break — holding a measured intake at a measured condition instead of letting it drift across a weekend. None of that is a power story, and no cloth supplies one. On the road the same property arrives on a longer clock: an S 1000 R covers a season, not a weekend, and the panel returns to its starting restriction whenever that suits, not at whatever mileage a schedule guessed. No insert element makes a series road bike measurably stronger. It makes one line of the upkeep repeatable.

The medium in this listing

The P08 is the road and track cloth, not the racing one. It is quoted at an 80 µm aperture and 5,050 l/m²/sec, and in Sprint Filter's own comparison holds 93.13 per cent of 100-micron test particles where four-layer oiled cotton holds 76.42 per cent. The racing weave for the same airbox, the P08 F1-85, opens to 85 µm for a rated 15,000 l/m²/sec at close to two and a half times this price. More air through a wider aperture at a good deal more expense: a specification for a context, and a road roadster is not in it.

Care and cleaning

Cleaning the PM171S is a dry job in the ordinary case: an air line on the clean face, worked outwards through the weave, then refit. Where a wash is warranted, use lukewarm water with a mild detergent and rinse until the water is clear. Then let it dry through in open air, however long that takes; heat and flame destroy polyester, so neither comes near it. It goes back dry, never oiled. The Downloads tab carries the maintenance sheet.

Fitment & Compatibility

Made for the BMW S 1000 R built from 2021 to 2026, dropping straight into the standard airbox. This generation of the roadster keeps one part number for its whole run; the other names on the list are not all so simple, so check your machine's year against the Fitment tab rather than the model name. Five machines share the element; the tab lists each with its years.