I've been experimenting with tires for quite a while now and I found some very interesting super soft semi slick tires that performed great during winter, sprint and autumn. However now we're rapidly entering summer season and my lovely soft semi slicks simply started to melt and suffer overheat damage on my way to work...
My current summer tires are Michelin Cup 2 and well... they're not really all that great. I mean yeah sure I'm not saying they're bad tires but it's just that I believe they're not really suited for me and my driving style. I thought it's maybe pressure and tried to play around with it but didn't help. I simply can't manage to get them to optimal operating temps so as a result they grip like sh*t both in rain AND dry comparing to my lovely soft, wet compound TW80 semi slicks (Extreme Tyres VR1 W5) that I used in spring and autumn. And people while rarely notice small upgrades - they always feel small downgrades. So now it just bugs me how noticeably worse those tires are. According to my measurements I'm getting my tires up to 50-60 deg depending on how I drive so natural choice would be to look for some medium compound tires with optimal operating temps within this range.
And apparently Extreme Tyres does indeed make VR2 semi slicks in R7A TW140 compound made specifically for 30-80 deg operating temps which sounds just like what I need, however...
They look like this and I'm not gonna lie it looks a bit creepy xD I mean it's not like I'm complete noob in terms of semi slicks in the rain - I used to daily drive MX5 with bald Federal 595RS-R and I'm still alive but when I look at this Extreme VR2 tread pattern and compare it even to 595 it... gives some pretty sketchy vibe. I'm not tread pattern expert but they look a little bit similar to Toyo Proxes R888R so I believe they should be just as sh*t in the rain as Toyos so... Does anyone have experience with driving aggressive semi slicks in rainy conditions on street?
Alternatives that I'm also considering are Federal tires but unfortunately Federal doesn't seem to list optimal operating temps for their tires so I'm not really sure which ones should I get. That said FZ-201 seem to be made in super soft TW40 compound however then again I'm a bit worried that they're gonna overheat just like my autumn/spring Extremes.