After searching for a while the Bridgestone Potenza line seems to be one of the best performing street/track tires on the market.

I currently have the RE050As on my car and am thinking about switching to the higher performance RE-01Rs. I plan on keeping the same 245/40 and 265/35 if they make those sizes for the 01Rs

Is it worth the switch. I want to get the best performance out of my car, but would also like be able to drive my car in the rain and cold weather (not snow, just cold)

Do the RE-01Rs have to be warmed, are they too slick to drive cold?

I guess I drive "spirited" on the street and will be auto crossing about once every month or every other month.

Let me know what you think (also if there is another tire you think is better performance wize than the Potenzas)

Thanks

 

Go tirerack.com and read their review about the Dunlop Star Specs. They are supposed to be the new extreme performance tire leaders..

You cannot go wrong with Bridgestone though..

 

Performance tires (all) show a marked decrease in handling when road surfaces are cold (40 degrees or less). Doesn't matter if the tires are “warmed up.” What matters is the road surface temperature.

 

yes it will be worth it, especially since you're planning on autox'ing once a month or so.

guys at the track use r comps when ambient air temp is in the 40's. re01r's, star specs, xs, nt05, etc should be fine as long as it doesn't get too cold. you just need to be aware that it'll take longer to warm up your tires. pretty much all tires need to be warmed up.

 

Thanks guys.

I live in Mass so it does get pretty cold up here. But my main concern is the RE 01s being noticably worse in the cold than the RE050A. I don't really drive the car much or hard in the cold months anyways.

Really other than not getting myself killed in the winter, I want the best possible summer tire out there.

The tire rack reviews by customers have no basis. Maybe Im just not seeing it, but does tire rack independly review each tire on their own?

Ill definitly check out those Dunlops

 

I'm not familiar with the nt05s, but none of these tires are available in stock sizes.

Most of the "extreme" performance tires are not available in 19s. With the RE-01Rs, you'd have to run 275/30/19s. If you plug this into a tire calculator, they give a warning as this size is not recommended. However, there is a Nismo owner, whitt1 who runs this size without any problems.

The extreme tires are great, but do not offer 19s in most cases. You get better grip, but compromise, ride, tread life and noise. They also do not fair as well in cold weather.

If you're after performance, you're better off running wider tires all around. I'd rather do that than run "grippier" tires in stock sizes. But alas, on the street, it really doesn't matter.

 

Tire rack independently tests the new tires..

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/...irePageLocQty=

 

but unless the review is done on a Z, it really doesn't tell you much

 

I don't knwo if it matters to you but if youre going to be driving summer extreme tires in the winter, they will wear faster and not provide nearly as much grip as an all season or winter tire would at that temperature.

In the summer, I see a lot of autoX people who DD their cars using RE-01Rs. I stick with Pole position All seasons which are an extreme performance all season.

 

I could understand if they used a van or something..but they used an 08 BMW 325i coupe..

I know they still are not the same cars, but the tires cannot perform that entirely different on these two cars..

 

you would be surprised - it's like saying because 1 coilover works great on 1 car, that it works great on all cars...same thing here

 

depends on the tire and the application. if i'm at the track or an autox, i will take an r comp tire in stock size over a wider all season any day. but the gap between UHP sticky street tires and r comps is narrowing because those tires were basically released because the tire manufacturer is competing for top times in street tire autox and time attack classes.

to the OP, hopefully you don't plan on driving any UHP summer tire in winter months. maybe if the the roads are completely dry but you may want to check if the manufacturer specifies a minimum temp use. toyo's r comps can't be used below a certain temp or they'll crack. i doubt a street tire will have that limitation but the rubber will be super hard.

 

R compounds is one thing, but if you run max performance tires ala PS2s or something of the like, I'd take the wider tire. For myself, I don't even run UHP, but would rather have the tire above that.

 

+1 for the Star Specs.

My good friend and autoX competition replaced his WORN RE-01Rs with the Star Specs on his S2000 and his lap times dropped half a second (relative to me and competitors) over the remainder of the season. Coincidence? Maybe, but probably not.

I'll be buying a set of Star Specs next month in preparation for next AutoX season. I'm sold on them.

Their marketing material states that they are designed to maximize grip at lower temperatures which is great for AutoX.

 

Thanks, thats what im really concerned about since I wont be swapping them out. Sounds like its a death trap . I guess Ill stick with the RE050 A

 

They are not even comparable speaking of performance.
RE050A are totally crap.
They even perform worse than Toyo T1R.
RE-01R are one of the best performance tires around. They have been in Asia much earlier than North America. They perform extremly close to R tires.
I have tried 2 sets of RE050A. The first set was my OEM G35 19" tires which are 225/40R19 and 245/40R19. I hated them with in one month and got myself a set of T1R. When I am done with the T1R i got a very good deal on a set of 255/35R19 and 285/35R19 so I gave it another try. I thought being wider would actually grips better. They are better but not better than the T1R i got so I got myself another set of T1R again.
I always perfer directional tires in rain and I have only heard good things on RE01R in wet.
Its very said Bridgestone used the RE050A Pole Position as their flagship tires because the S-03 PP performs better in dry and much better in wet.

that's my 2 cents.

 

how much do RE-01R tires generally run in price? And how much better are they than T1R's?

 

I like the stock REO50-A they put on the 350. I'm running 265/35 R 245/40 F, so maybe the wider tire helps but from reading a lot of reviews I beleive they are one of the best in terms of street tires right next to the PS2s. But Ill check out the TR-1's.

Does anyone have an up to date consumer reports report on tires. The ones on this site may be getting outdated now.

 

Once again, goes to show how interpretive "reviews" for tires can be

I am a pretty decent driver - I've held a pro license before, been racing for 1/2 my life now. I know the ins and outs of suspension setup on a variety of cars, and particularly with my Z, as I've tried so many setups on it. I have the RE050A on my Z now (265/30/19, 285/30/19). I'm not doing track days with the car anymore, but I certainly know a crap tire from a good one - at least as far as my tastes are concerned. Others opinions will vary, and obviously do. I don't sell any of these, so I have no axe to grind as far as brand loyalty, margins, etc. I also am not opposed to trying a new tire out for the hell of it, and ditching out of it quickly if I don't like it - I enjoy it. I absolutely LOVE the RE050A on my car, and would not hesitate to run them again. They have been on my car since last spring, and about 10k miles. I previously have run S03's on my Z, as well as well as RT615, Toyo's, as well as A048's for track use. I HATED (and I cannot stress that enough) the S03 on my car. They did grip well, but nothing I did to the dampening settings on 2 different sets of coilovers made them remotely street friendly. They were harsh...obnoxiously harsh. I got rid of them very quickly. They were no more competant in the rain than anything else I have run on the Z, from the Toyo, to the Falkens, to my current S03, to anything else that's been on the car since changing from OEM's. Then again, I purposely do not push the car in the wet, for safety sake, so I suppose short of an R Compound, anything would work well enough for me in that regard.

The RE050A, to me, have a very predictable turn in, and give me tons of feedback when they are at their limit. The breakaway on them is extremely progressive, meaning that when I have gotten the car to come out from under me (and I have!), it's not all of a sudden. This completely counters the feelings I had with the S03, which gave me next to no warning and had a tendency to simple snap out, very quickly. My S03's were slightly smaller, at 245/40/18 and 275/40/18. I ran the S03's on 2 different coilovers (Cusco and HKS) always with the same differential (Cusco RS) and varying alingments within a given range, from fairly aggressive, to pretty conservative (I like to play around with it). I was forever playing with tire pressure with the S03, as well as preload and dampening settings, trying to get it dialed in where it did everything reasonably well, and just never got it nailed. With the RE050A's the car now wears, I've run more conservative alignments, since the car has no plans for track use anymore. I started at a fairly nomimal 32 psi all around and have since moved to 38 front, 36 rear, and have not had any reason to change them. I run exactly the same damper settings I did with the RT615 the car previously wore - never touched it.

Assuming stock is ok when its time to do new tires, I'm going to give the PS2 a try next. If they aren't available, I'd happily run another set of RE050A again

 

TireRack does testing yes. But keep in mind that TireRack also sells tires. Think about it.