Most of you might remember my first track day article featuring “Combfilter” and his road racing IS350.
As a continuation of the series one of our readers “Chad” was given the unique opportunity to evaluate some of Bridgestone’s latest wares under various conditions. Chad is a quite competent driver so the thought of him tooling around in everything from a GTI to a AMG63 intrigued me.
Location
The legendary Firebird International Raceway in Phoenix Arizona, where courses were set up for dry and wet conditions. Wet conditions in this case meant a severe soaking where tires were tested for maximum adhesion under standing water conditions. In this case the parking lot probably is best suited real road conditions far better than a billiard table smooth road track. After all these are road tires not specialized racing slicks so varied road conditions are to expected.

The Driver
Chad is a certified gearhead in every sense of the word. Owning a variety of cars from pickup trucks and high performance vehicles, he knows them all inside and out. Some of his friends glowingly call him the walking encyclopedia of car facts. This is the kind of guy you call on a bet at 3:00 AM, and ask what horsepower a base Toyota Corolla had in 1996. He can simply spit out an accurate fact then go back to sleep. His expertise is not of the track, but more of an educated enthusiast that can more than hold his own in an event like this.
The Cars
A variety of cars were on hand to test a number of different tire combinations. The lineup comprised of the following: 2008 BMW 328, 2008 Volkswagen GTI, and both the Mercedes Benz E63 and the mighty 450+ horsepower C63 AMG. With this type of variety, there was a little bit for everyone involved. The first session would be limited to 3 laps each in all tire and vehicle combinations. However other sessions gave more warm up time.
The Event
The first car Chad drove was the BMW 328 with Yokohama S Drive tires on the wet track. While the Yoko it is a decent tire, when pushed hard it became noisy and tended to slide a bit. Immediately after on the same track with the Bridgestone Potenza RE760 the situation was different these tires had more grip and you were now able to go into the tight turns with more speed.