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Safety First
This month we give space to an aspect that can dramatically change your performance on track and your safety on the road, thanks to the improvement of several points. I’m talking about tire choice.
In fact, the choice of your car’s tires, sometimes rough, in other cases with cash saving in mind, could cost you a lot in terms of safety and feedback of your car. There are plenty of brands on the market and we all know the most noble ones, but the choice of the right rubber is not always as easy as it seems, so you got to keep the car booklet at hand and maybe get a couple of advices from an expert.
First we analyze on which aspects of our driving style we deal with the choice of a good tire:
– Grip: this is, of course, as you know, the force that the tire performs on the road surface (dry, wet or snowy). The more soft the compound of the tire is, the more grip we have, but at the expense of the life of the same. Slick tires, without the typical grooves which drain water, will be very high performance on dry asphalt, but offer a very limited grip and cornering in wet conditions. For our everyday’s car, it is therefore necessary to opt for a tire with medium consistency suitable for all types of terrain, given that it’s not possible to make a pit stop in case of sudden rain. After testing different cars on track, it was found that comparing different tires, the best improvement for lap times happens thanks to the best rubber you get.
– Safety: a proper tire will not allow you only to cut a few seconds a lap on your track days, but also guarantees a remarkable safety compared to less good compounds. Both regarding cornering, both in terms of braking. And above all, with a good stability while cornering, you avoid the unpleasant and dangerous drifting of the car, or an imbalance of the weight of the same, which would result in the need for playing with the wheel in a way not so common to all drivers and that would ultimately be able to cause a bad accident.
– Consumption and noise: although in sports driving, fuel economy is not the main target, for our daily life, to have a tire that both improves our mileage and does not emit an annoying rolling noise, always represents the right choice.
– Appeal: it has nothing to do with performance or things closed to that, but if you buy a second hand car that fits 4 Michelin tires, that would give you more confidence about what can be the maintenance of the same, compared to an identical vehicle, fitted with 4 Chinese tires.
In conclusion, all of us like to take care of our car and certainly if it is a performance model, why not to take the opportunity to make it even more deadly?
Our recommendation, as first improvement, is just to dedicate yourself to the tires; thus, also improving performance, you will limit the risk of not being able to output all the power you got, maybe difficult to manage with economic rubber. A first step, which is essential and that you will make you earn points on all fronts.
Carlo Brema
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