2013 European Summer Sports Tyre Test

We don't usually analyse the European tyre test, carried out by the excellent German ADAC organisation, but this one was too good to ignore.

Not only is it the first year they've used a tyre larger than 16", there's several new tyres involved in the 225/45 R17 tyre test. It's the first time we've seen the new replacement for the Vredestein Ultrac Sessanta in a group test, along side some of it's new mid range stable mates, the Toyo T1 Sport and the Falken FK453, and its the first time we've seen the Continental Sport Contact 5 beat the Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2. Interesting!

The Details

The reason we don't usually analyse the ADAC test is because it's a little thin on words, and sadly this year is no different. What we can do, is work out a little bit of form from the data.

The Continental beat the Goodyear thanks to a stronger wet performance, as it scored lower in the dry, was noisier, used more fuel and wore more quickly. It's not unusual for tests to be weighted towards wet performance, and in this instance wet performance was worth 40% of the final grade, compared to 20% for the dry performance. Still, an excellent result for the Sport Contact 5, clearly the best in the wet and not far behind in the dry.

The Goodyears new sister, the Dunlop SportMaxx RT matched the Goodyear in everything but the dry, where it was only a little behind, and the fourth place Michelin almost matched the Dunlop, just losing out in rolling resistance and wear (oddly for a Michelin...) but second best in the wet.

Fifth place is very respectable for the new Vredestein Ultrac Vorti, especially when you consider the tyres it's normally compared against, the Falken FK453 and Toyo T1 Sport finished thirteenth and sixteenth respectively. The Vredestein matched the top placed Goodyear in the dry and got excellent wear results, just slightly marked down for its wet and rolling resistance results.

The Bridgestone Potenza S001 had a relatively poor result ending ninth due to an average wet showing, despite being excellent in the dry, and for some reason Pirelli supplied the P7, instead of the more appropriate P Zero. The result, eleventh.

Other points of note are a strong performance for both Hankook and Semperit, and a poor result for Uniroyal with one of our favourites, the Rainsport 2. While the Uniroyal was still extremely strong in the wet, it was let down by high fuel consumption and a bad dry result. The rumour on the street is the Rainsport 3 is due this year... it should move things on nicely.

The Results