Intro
Firstly a massive thank you to Goodyear for the opportunity. Having had the car about a week I was fortunate to be chosen to long term test the new Eagle F1 SuperSport tyre.
On my last 3 cars (Audi A3 3.2, B8 Audi S4 Avant and R56 Mini FJCW) I have run Michelin Pilot Sport 4 or 4S tyres (as I know a lot of people currently run Michelins) and I was keen to see how this latest Goodyear tyre compares. I will be writing a number of reviews throughout the life of the tyre and this first review is following the Evo Magazine track day at Goodwood on 1st July of which this review will focus on track performance only. In order to try and be impartial I have not read any reviews of this tyre so all the opinions below are my own.
Tyres on Track
As I’ve never driven the Goodwood circuit before and had only had the car just over a week I built up steadily especially over the first session. The tyres gave me confidence from the start of each session and didn’t really require any warm up. The initial turn in was good and the tyre held on well throughout the corner and I didn’t have any wheel spin even on full throttle (or really any hint of wheel spin). Braking stability was good, although on really hard braking the rear of the car did move around a little bit but that is probably to be expected. What impressed me the most was how the tyres held up over the whole session (especially as the car was registering near 30 degrees and track temperature must have been over 30 degrees all afternoon) and how consistent the grip level was compared to other road tyres I’ve used on track (Michelin Pilot Sport 4 especially). Normally these tyres will have decent levels of grip at the start but through a normal 15 minute session they will start to go off and overheat loosing grip, normally resulting in understeer and wheel spin in the traction zones. The high speed corning and stability was also good and gave me confidence to take Fordwater flat out in the final session.
Did I have any negatives regarding the tyre on track? Apart from occasionally the rear end moving around under braking not really, obviously you always want even more grip on track but there are two tyres in the Goodyear range which would do that; SuperSport R and SuperSport RS. On one or two occasions I pushed too hard into Woodcote and had to back out and there was a bit of understeer but I’ve noticed on the road if I don’t accelerate enough through the corner and use the diff properly the car can do this anyway. For me this is definitely the best tyre I have used on track which isn’t a proper ‘track’ tyre and I’m basing my opinions compared with other road tyres. Of course I know that proper ‘track’ tyres will have more grip in all aspects of track driving. This has certainly given me something to think about whether to save the expense and hassle of additional wheels and tyres if I’m only doing a couple of track days a year.
I only managed to video my final session which is on YouTube in the video below if you’re interested in seeing how the tyre performs, looking at the rough lap times they are consistent throughout the session and don’t drop off, backing up my initial impressions. All laps where I don’t get held up or have to back off are approximately 1 minute 33 seconds.
My next review will focus on the road driving, hopefully we will have a mixture of wet and dry weather over the coming weeks so I can test out different aspects in different driving conditions.
Thanks for taking the time to read this blog, if you have any questions or comments please post them.
EP400 in the Wild 