If you don’t know how to use your grip, all that grip is pointless.
This seems like a trick question. Racing slicks will offer better grip than a track-legal tire in a race setting. Racing slicks were made for race cars. Even if your car has some performance DNA it doesn’t perform at the same level. It’s like pouring racing fuel into your daily-driven muscle car. The expensive gas will be wasted if the car is not tuned to use it.
This is what makes this Tyre Review video so fascinating. Street car owners who have been to track days or attended autocross events will know the vast differences between track tires and street tires. Street cars, where comfort and practicality outweigh performance, experience the same level of improvement as track tires. Jonathan Benson, tire expert, turned to Hyundai for advice.
The N hot hatch is capable thanks to its performance-oriented suspension and 276 horsepower going directly to the front wheels. Benson exercised the Hyundai for the better part of a day, cycling through four sets of 18-inch Pirelli tires starting with P Zero ultra-high-performance street rubber. The next set was P Zero Trofeo R track-legal tires. Next came two sets of Pirelli hard compound racing slippers. The first set was intended for use on the Ferrari cup cars. The second set is for front-wheel-drive race cars. Did you notice a difference?
Yes it was. The lap time on street tires was 1:38.02, but the time on track tires was 1:34.81. Benson confirmed much better mid-corner grip. The Ferrari-focused slicks took 2.48 seconds off of the track tires. The i30N was a quick 1:32.33. The front-wheel-drive racing track slicks were slightly faster, returning a 1;31.79.
Although some improvements were expected, two and a quarter seconds is still a lot of time on a racetrack. It’s a remarkable test for a car as small as the i30 N. It also shows that pure slicks can provide the best grip on the track, even without a hardcore suspension system.
Even in the dry.