by Peter Walker of DJ Sportscars
Tyres are always a difficult subject to debate in that no one tyre can provide outstanding performance in all areas (dry handling, wet handling, dry braking, resistance to aquaplaning, rolling resistance, noise, comfort, longevity and so on). In the context of a sports cars, some of these design criteria are obviously going to be considered a lot more relevant than others. But it is unfortunately an unavoidable facet of tyre design that changes to improve one particular area of performance will inevitably be made at the expense of another.
We select our types solely on the criteria of handling and braking performance and for our purposes rate their dry capabilities as being of more importance than their wet.
in the past we have particularly liked the original yokahama AVS tyre, preferring it to it's replacement the AVS S1-Z. We have also liked the Toyo proxes plus which has now been replaced by the Toyo T1-s. The design of this later T1-s Toyo, however, has been biased towards wet weather performance. This is a good sensible move for an every day car but is less appealing for our particular type of use.
A tyre which comes out well in tests, being rated good in the wet and good in the dry, is the Continental Sport Contact. We hope to try a set of these on one of our Rush demonstration vehicles soon. We'll let you know what we think.