Quote:
Originally Posted by fatoni
i dont think the prius tire holds the car back as much as this forum would like to think. just take a look at that tire review that happened a couple months ago. the mustang and 1 series gained more time from a tire change despite the fact that they ended up with a less sticky tire after they swapped.
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I wonder about that result too. I know when I autocrossed on stock tires, the rear end felt very loose under power. After switching to max performance summer tires, the rear end felt much more stable.
If I were to guess, the overall grip of the stock Prius tires is probably close to that of the max performance tires (within 0.02 g), but the transition to slip is much more abrupt. A pro-driver like Randy Pobst can hold the car at the edge of grip, so his times were only minimally affected, but his level of confidence in the tires was higher. His comments bear this out. Randy guessed the car was much faster on max performance summer tires even though the difference in laptimes was actually minimal.