All-Season Versus Winter Tires: A Racecar Driver’s Consensus

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The next test was to highlight deceleration on ice. We were to try to gain as much speed as possible coming into marked brake zone, and then we were to try to get the car to completely stop as quickly as possible. 

 

Even though we weren't competing for times, the fellow, fun media members found the competition fun in the brake zone to see how close of a braking distance they could attain on the all-season equipped Kia Sportage versus the winter tire equipped Sportage. Some members would strategize a lower top speed coming into the brake zone to make up for the lack of grip in the brake zone. Other members competed for the highest top speed coming into the brake zone. Regardless, the brake zones felt terrible on the all-seasons. ABS basically had to be relied on as a weird sort of mechanical grip to keep the wheels from sliding under braking.

 

Next up, Team USA Olympian, Tom Howell, came by to teach us how to do his craft of curling. 

 

The Michelin Man himself was up for the challenge of learning from the best. 

 

To make things interesting, Michelin attached different tire compounds to the bottom of each curling rock. They used three different types of compounds for demonstration: summer, all-season, and winter. This was a great way to see the different levels of grip the three tires had with consistent releases from Tom. The summer tire compound ended up on the other side of the hockey rink. The all-season compound had considerably more grip, but still ended up three-quarters of the way down the rink. The winter tire compound put the big brakes on, and Tom couldn't get the curling rock to get very far at all with it. 

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