Negative on 225/45-15 ZII's. From everything I've read on the Rivals, they are head and shoulders about everything else in their category, and they wear like iron. With a price right in the ballpark of the competition, and a 200 UTQG, they're going to be hard to beat.
From Hollis Racing on Facebook (Andy Hollis)
[INDENT]
Street Tire FAQ - Part II...2013
by Hollis Racing on Monday, February 11, 2013 at 4:37pm ยท
It's a new year, but more importantly for racers is there's a whole new crop of Extreme Performance Summer tires coming on line. We haven't seen anything new in about 5-6 years, so many of the tire makers are revising their existing designs or introducing replacements. As we did with our previous FAQ, we'll be using this note as a one-stop index of facts on all the new tires. We'll be updating this frequently as new info comes in...so check back frequently. Or "Like" our FB page to get notifications.
For reference, here's Part 1 of the FAQ:
Street Touring and Track Day Tire FAQ - UTQG 140+ | Facebook
Dunlop Direzza ZII - This one is an update on the Z1 Star Spec and has the same basic premise. It is a responsive tire, with high grip, works in a variety of weather conditions, and is long-lasting. Tire Rack has their product page here:
Dunlop*Direzza ZII
More importantly, Tire Rack has done preliminary testing versus the outgoing Z1 and found that the new tire was about a half-second faster in the dry and over a second faster in the wet on their short, 30-second autocross course. Here's that test:
Tire Test Results : Dunlop Direzza ZII Introductory Track Drive
BFGoodrich gForce Rival - Welcome back, BFG. A staple in the performance tire business in the 80's and 90's, BFG's focus has been elsewhere for some time. They returned to the r-comp world with the latest R1 two years ago, updated it with the softer R1-S for autocross and time trials, and now have an entry into the Extreme Performance street tire segment. This tire hits all the buttons at once as it is super-consistent, extremely long-lasting, very precise, delivers gobs of grip, and even comes in some uncommon sizes that racers like to use (e.g. 225/45-15).
Here's the Tire Rack Rival product page:
BFGoodrich*g-Force Rival
And here's TR's write-up on the Rival's launch event at NOLA:
Tire Test Results : BFGoodrich g-Force Rival Launch Event
Update: The Rival has an asymmetric tread design, to better resist deflection during cornering on the outside, while allowing more void for water dispersion on the inside. BFG has confirmed that the tire carcass itself is symmetric so it can be flipped for longer life in camber challenged cars. This would only be useful in the dry and only when the tread depth has gotten down to at least the 4/32nds range.
Now the really good stuff...
BF Goodrich kindly offered the chance to compare the Rival against the ZII on NOLA's full north course
We attended the Rival launch event, but got in a day early to do some on-camera interview work. BFG had just received shipment of a set of the Dunlop ZII's and their lead test driver for the Rival project was on track doing some comparison laps in an MX5 Cup car. We were then given an opportunity to do the same comparative testing and found the results to be astounding.
The short answer is that we were a full second faster on the Rival than on the ZII on a 2:08 lap of NOLA's full course. More importantly, we went out on the Rival first and found it to be very easy to go fast, very consistent (three laps in a row within tenths), very precise (easy to hit apexes) and very forgiving (tire could run at a large slip angle without giving up).
By contrast, the ZII was quite "peaky" developing maximum grip at small slip angles only, and would give up quickly as you went outside those zones. For a well-balanced car like the MX5, it proved to be a challenge to keep both front and rear within those zones consistently through all phases of a typical turn. We got a little out of shape several times on the ZII and never had it happen even once with the Rival, despite running 10 laps on each.
Here's a great chart that BFG showed us that explains the difference between a peaky tire and one that is progressive at the limit.
BFGoodrich Rival Launch Event, NOLA Motorsports Park, Jan 22-23, 2013 - Vorshlag Motorsports BMW (M3, E36, E46, E92), Evo, Mustang, Project Car and Racing Events Gallery.
Given all of that, the ZII is most likely to be highly setup dependent, and will reward precise driving. The Rival, on the other hand, floats all boats higher. It will make "heroes out of zeros", much in the way that the Kumho V710 r-comp did when it first came out, versus the super-precise Hoosier A3S03 of the day. This is especially critical on the track, where one small mistake can have disasterous results. For autocross, in the right hands and with the right setup, the ZII may prove to be faster for the best drivers. But that's a lot of "if's".
Another good analogy is that the Rival is simply a better Hankook RS-3. It meets or beats that tire in all aspects. More responsive, more consistent (needs less heat), more grip, and better wear. The ZII is simply a more optimized Z1. So fans of each of those older tires may be happiest with their natural successor.
But what about the 195 Toyo R1R used so successfully on all the small cars for autocross? Well, that's a really good question. On one hand, the Rival runs at similar slip angles as the R1R but gives way more feedback via noise levels (the R1R is almost silent). This will make the tire way easier to drive to the grip limit. And hands-on experience says the Rival is a lot more responsive. But we do not yet have enough information as to actual relative grip levels to know whether the combination will be better. Stay tuned, as we will be testing all of these tires for GRM in the upcoming months.
Speaking of testing, there have been two tests of note so far. BFG has released results from their own internal testing on a road course and Tire Rack did a preliminary test on prototype tires back in the Fall. Slides with this data were presented at the Rival launch event and our good friends at Vorshlag Motorsports took pics.
Here you can see that not only is Rival faster than the current crop, they are more consistent:
BFGoodrich Rival Launch Event, NOLA Motorsports Park, Jan 22-23, 2013 - Vorshlag Motorsports BMW (M3, E36, E46, E92), Evo, Mustang, Project Car and Racing Events Gallery.
44.45 BFG gForce Rival
44.68 Hankook RS-3
44.80 Yokohama AD08
45.32 Dunlop Direzza Z1
45.37 Toyo R1R
And here's the Tire Rack preliminary autocross test with the same trends as the road course:
BFGoodrich Rival Launch Event, NOLA Motorsports Park, Jan 22-23, 2013 - Vorshlag Motorsports BMW (M3, E36, E46, E92), Evo, Mustang, Project Car and Racing Events Gallery.
29.2 BFG gForce Rival
29.4 Hankook RS-3
29.4 Yokohama AD08
29.8 Dunlop Direzza Z1
What else is coming?
Also on the horizon is the Bridgestone RE-11A, an update in selected sizes of their highly rated RE-11. Latest reports show this tire to be arriving in the March-April timeframe in the following sizes:
195/50-15
205/50-15
205/55-16
225/50-16
215/45-17
225/45-17
235/45-17
245/40-17
255/40-17
245/40-18
Kumho also has a new offering in the works called the V720. Tread design looks like a modified version of the XS with some RE-11 added..though the name sounds a lot like the V710 r-comp. Somebody has an identity crisis. Earliest availability iin the US s late-2013, though 2014 is more likely. Here's a pic:
http://cdn.mkimg.carview.co.jp/minkara/userstorage/000/001/810/636/9e7155809a.jpg[/INDENT]
New 225-45-15 extreme summer tire
Back to top
