While they aren't the sexiest components you can get for your ride, tires make a big difference when it comes to overall performance. With any luck they'll be the only part of your vehicle that will ever make contact with the road (at least intentionally), and all the horsepower in the world isn't worth much if you can't effectively put it to the pavement.
Although there are stickier compounds available that are still DOT legal, high performance summer tires are the most widely chosen type of rubber by enthusiasts because they can feasibly be used year-round in dryer regions for both daily driving and the occasional track day or autocross session.
Unlike more aggressive performance tires, their design gives some consideration to wet driving conditions and tread life, along with the requisite dry handling. The gist here is that summer tires are the mostly likely type of tread to end up on daily driven performance cars like the Ford Mustang, Dodge Challenger and Chevrolet Camaro, which makes the battle for the hearts and wallets of enthusiasts particularly heated in this realm.
Getting Up To Speed
Our first round testing took us out to Thermal Club's wet/dry handling course, where we evaluated the ExtremeContact Sport, along with several sets of competitor tires, using the BMW M235i coupes and Subaru WRXs as our test vehicles.
Continental engineers conceded they gave up a hint of dry grip and opted to give the ExtremeContact a more progressive feel at the limit – this new tire's wet handling and braking performance is at the top of the class.
While the ExtremeContact Sport's grip is essentially on par with the best of the summer tire bunch on dry pavement, we saw for ourselves that Continental's new tire performs at the top of the class when it comes to wet handling and wet braking.
Next we headed out to the autocross for some timed laps in a squadron of BMW M235i coupes – nothing like a friendly rivalry between automotive journalists to quickly find the limits of grip on a set of tires.
Since all the cars rode on Continental's new tire this didn't serve as a direct comparison with the ExtremeContact Sport's competitive set, but we can report that the new rubber held up admirably to the abuse, and resisted becoming gummy from excessive heat despite our repeated spirited laps where we often reached (and exceeded) the tires' limit of grip.
The tires also provide a good amount of feedback from behind the wheel, allowing for throttle and steering corrections mid-corner without getting unstable or leaving us wondering whether or not the tires could handle harder cornering, heavier braking, or more aggressive throttle inputs.
The last phase of our testing brought us out to Thermal Club's South Palm Circuit, a 1.8-mile road course with a variance of corners and a nice, meaty 2500-foot back straight away. It's here where we'd be able to stretch the legs of the 825 horsepower Petty's Garage Mustang, along with a race-spec Porsche Cayman, a Dodge Challenger SRT 392, a BMW M3 sedan and a BMW M4 coupe in a series of rotating stints in each car, all clad with ExtremeContact Sport rubber.
Keeping in mind that the ExtremeContact Sport is ultimately a street tire, its ability to corral the sheer violence of the Mustang's power plant was impressive, though that's undoubtedly due in part to the traction and stability control systems that were at play here.
The tires held up as well as any summer tire your author has had out on a road course. Given this circuit's fast layout, shortcomings will quickly make their presence known in short order after a few instances of scrubbing off speed from about 140 mph to make a tight corner. Despite the abuse, the Continentals remained predictable throughout the sessions in the various cars at our disposal.
Without competitive tires on hand for back-to-back timed road course laps, whether the ExtremeContact Sports can generate lap times that are on par or beyond that of the best in the summer tire offerings of the bunch still remains to be seen. Pricing has yet to be announced, but Continental says they expect it to be similar to the outgoing ExtremeContact DW. Assuming that ends up being the case, it would put the ExtremeContact Sport on par with mid-range brands while offering overall performance closer to the upper end of the spectrum. That kind of math certainly works for us.
Understanding The ExtremeContact Sport And The Performance Tire Hierarchy
The multitude of angry-sounding terms and letters that comprise the naming schemes for performance tires can make it tough to accurately discern which type of tire is best suited for a specific type of use. For instance, Continental's ContiProContact SSR sounds like a pretty aggressive tire, but as an all-season run-flat it's actually designed for longevity and use in all types of climates, including light snow, making high performance dry handling a rather low priority on the totem pole for this particular tire.
On the other end of the spectrum there's the Continental ContiForceContact, which might sound a little more mundane, but it's actually at the upper limit of DOT compliance and is considered a “streetable” competition tire, and therefore not recommended for daily driving duty because of its limited capability in wet conditions.
Situated in between the two are high-performance summer tires. As the name implies, these tires are best suited for use in warm, dry months or in areas that don't see much rain throughout the year. Along with the ExtremeContact DW (which the ExtremeContact Sport will replace), tires like the Michelin Pilot Super Sport, Pirelli PZero, Bridgestone Potenza and the Hankook Ventus V12 evo2 are the usual suspects in this category.
Although tread life and wet handling considerations are part of the summer tire equation, dry grip is still the highest priority here. But with the sheer capability on tap in today's modern high performance cars, it takes some highly skilled wheelmen to get every last bit of feedback from the car and the compounds being tested. That's why Continental, in what they theorize may be a first for a tire manufacturer, has brought on professional racing drivers to help with their street car tire development.
Five drivers from the IMSA racing series took part in the three-year development process for the ExtremeContact Sport, including five-time Rolex 24 at Daytona champion, Andy Lally. “Being able to push a tire to its limit, while still leaving enough bandwidth inside your brain to evaluate and give feedback to the tire engineers is exactly why race car drivers are good for tire development,” Lally explained. “I've had over 20 years of racing experience working with hundreds of different types of tires and each of those experiences contributed to this project.”
The post On Track With Continental's New ExtremeContact Sport Summer Tire appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
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