Hang out with SCCA autocrossers or road racers long enough and you’ll hear the phrase “no-season tires” pop up. They’re talking about what the rest of the world calls “all-season tires,” but anybody with nontrivial experience on a racetrack or cone course knows that even the newest generation of year-rounders can’t cut the mustard at speed, or in the snow. If you’re driving a modern performance car and you don’t have dedicated summer performance tires strapped to all corners, you’re only experiencing a fraction of what it can do.
So-called “max-performance” summer tires are pretty hopeless when the thermometer heads south. That’s because tire manufacturers make each one of their products with a specific chemical cocktail designed to perform best in a specific temperature range.
Dedicated race rubber needs to be hot enough to burn your skin in order to perform properly, which is why you see racers weaving back and forth, “scrubbing” heat into their tires during safety-car laps. Summer performance tires tend to turn rock-hard and lose grip once the temperature drops below fifty degrees Fahrenheit or so.
For that reason, many drivers make the decision to compromise their car’s ultimate performance in the warmer months by fitting a set of no-season tires. They’re hoping that the relatively broad-temperature, moderate-grip rubber compounds they use will get them safely through winter. As a result, they struggle every time it snows—but they also then wonder why their Porsche seems strangely short on grip when the summer roads beckon.
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