Best tyre on the market for hot hatches
I have done both circuit and rally racing and like a tyre that has a good turn in feel, i.e. as soon as you turn the car in to the bend you can immediately feel the response of the tyre and the amount of grip being fed back through the wheel.Historic ...
I have done both circuit and rally racing and like a tyre that has a good turn in feel, i.e. as soon as you turn the car in to the bend you can immediately feel the response of the tyre and the amount of grip being fed back through the wheel.Historically I have preferred Dunlop or Avon tyres due to their excellent turn in qualities. However, my wife has quite different needs to me, so when we are buying a tyre for her use a balance of grip and comfort are needed.My wife’s car is a Holden Astra Sri 2.2. In the last three years we have had three types of tyre on the car with differing results (she claims I wear them out!).In order, oldest first the tyres the car has had have been:Dunlop SP Sport 3000 (replacement for those is now the SportMax)Bridgestone RE001 AdrenalineMichelin Pilot Sport 3I loved the original Dunlops as they had incredible wet weather grip and excellent turn in feel. However, their on road comfort was average to poor with significant tyre roar at medium to high speed and the odd bit of crashiness over manholes or other potholes. For pure speed they were hard to beat, but for my wife they were invasive and tiring over long distances. The front Dunlops were shot after only 12000km of hard driving.We shopped around to try and find a tyre that offered similar performance but was a little better for comfort. Having spoken to some friends in the trade and reviewed on line I was assured that the ultimate tyre should be the Bridgestone RE001. We bed the tyres in as usual for the first few days. I went up a favourite twisty road and entered a right hander in the wet I usually would take at about 60kmh at the same speed. The car understeered so much I had it on full lock, and it was more luck that judgment that the car didn’t go off. I put it down to either the road surface having diesel on it, or the tyre not having been bed in. However, in wet conditions the RE001’s were a liability from then on. They also had incredibly soft sidewalls and on turn in all sense of steering feeling was lost. In terms of ride comfort they were noisier than the Dunlops on coarse seal, but the same on smooth tarmac, although, and probably as a result of the soft sidewall, they used to bounce over potholes or manhole covers as the sidewall flexed, so much so that you could feel the steering wheel shudder on occasion. I wouldn’t touch another Bridgestone.The current and latest tyre is the Michelin Pilot Sport 3 (size 225 / 50 / 16). After searching far and wide and looking at other reviews my much favoured Dunlops were only receiving mediocre reviews. We drove a few different cars with different tyres on. At this point I must state that I had promised myself in the 1990s to never have a car with Michelin’s on it, as at that time they used to do pretty much what the Bridgestones did as described above. However, I can say hand on heart that the Pilot Sport 3 is a very high quality piece of kit.Turn in, while not as crisp as the Dunlop, is certainly very close in feel. What is better is that when the tyre is fully loaded in a corner and a bump is hit the Michelin’s refuse to be pushed off line, whereas the Dunlops would generally start to wander out with each bump. You can feel the Michelin’s settle in to the corner (i.e. the sidewall gives a little) but its more than reassuring rather than disconcerting.Tyre noise is significantly lower than either the Dunlop or Bridgestone, so much so that we thought the window seals had perished as we can now hear a bit of windroar, whereas before all we could hear was tyres! The Michelin’s do not tramline as the Bridgestones would, and they are very quiet on coarse seal, which is a problem in New Zealand. For longer journeys the Michelin is far superior to either of its competitors and is certainly grippier in the wet than even the Dunlop which was a surprise. Overall the Michelin Pilot Sport 3 is a tyre I would recommend to anyone who wants good high performance without sacrificing ride quality. One of the best tyres I have ever used on a road car.
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