Recently, Tire reviews got his hands on a set of Pirelli Sottozero designed for racing, as well as a Subaru rally car. This sets the stage for an incredibly fun comparison test between them WRC tires and the best street legal studded winter tires on the market: Pirelli Ice Zero 2s. But the question wasn’t whether the Sottozeros outperformed road tires. How much better they would be.
You don’t need to know much about tires or driving to figure out that a $2,000 race a tire with 7mm studs will have more traction in snow and ice than a $600 tire that has to meet road wear regulations. It just makes sense. But even so, when you see the two comparisons side by side, it’s clear how big the difference in performance really is. Spoiler: That’s a lot.
During the snow test, the host was able to cover the test track with the Ice Zero 2 in 67.3 seconds. On the Sottozeros, this time was reduced to 59.1 seconds. That’s an improvement of more than eight seconds. And on the ice test, the difference was even more amazing. Switching to rally tires reduced his lap time from 51.0 seconds to 33.1 seconds, nearly 18 seconds faster. this is it, A 35 percent improvement? Absolutely stupid.
The video does a great job of explaining the differences that make rally tires perform so much better, but the best part is that it wasn’t filmed in a studio. It was filmed at the test track, which means that in addition to learning a bit more about the tires, you’ll also get over eight minutes of sweet Subaru rally car footage. If that doesn’t interest you, I don’t know what will.
