Comfort tires better than Sports in rain

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Whitey093

Whitey093

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Whitey093
Last week in a race at suzuka with heavy rain, one car obliterated the field by using comfort soft versus the sport hards we had. I've done some testing and confirmed that they are way better in the wet. I used 450pp cars and 50% surface water.

This is news to me. I knew sports were better than racing after the wet b-spec special event at lemans using a 2j with sport softs, but had never thought about dropping to comforts.

Is this common knowledge that i somehow missed, or is this a revelation to others as well?
 
Whitey093
Last week in a race at suzuka with heavy rain, one car obliterated the field by using comfort soft versus the sport hards we had. I've done some testing and confirmed that they are way better in the wet. I used 450pp cars and 50% surface water.

This is news to me. I knew sports were better than racing after the wet b-spec special event at lemans using a 2j with sport softs, but had never thought about dropping to comforts.

Is this common knowledge that i somehow missed, or is this a revelation to others as well?
Click to expand...

This is common knowledge and is testimony on why a very select few cars come with sports tires stock. Majority cars should have comfort soft, comfort mediums.
 
Was you using Real grip? Well it makes sense that the comfort softs perform better under wet conditions compared to sports tyres because sports tyres are like a semi-slick tyre. And slick tyres don't perform well on wet roads.
 
With real grip (no point in driving rain races without) comfort soft become better at about 30% surface water when compared to sports hard.

Doesn't work out for sports medium or soft the same way. Someone had a chart listing which tyres are faster than others at certain %s but the comfort soft vs sports hard comparison is the only one I have any experience of myself.
 
not really news for me, this makes sense since comfort tires are analogous to street/summer tires in real life. street/summer tires have tread grooves and channels that dispels water from under the tire which prevents hydroplaning. semi slicks (sports tires) have minimal tread patterns and shallow tread blocks to improve dry grip at the expense of the ability to channel water away from under the tire.

With grip set on real, you can hydroplane with racing tires at speeds as low as 25-30 mph. Although I haven't put comfort softs on any car with more than 250 hp, I can tell how much more control comfort tires offer than the sports or racing tires in the rain.
 
Comfort softs don't beat Sports Hard by that much, however the comforts soft give you more confidence driving in the rain. Once we get to sports mediums and on then we are talking about semi slicks.

Watt2159
I feel like a dumbass now. :grumpy:
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Trust me man don't many people don't know this. Many people will argue you to death that majority cars come with sports hard.
 
In the race i referenced, the one car with comfort softs beat us so bad that no one else finished within the countdown. This was a league race with excellent drivers, not hacks. I am pretty fast myself and was timing about 40 seconds off the leader. By the end of the race the surface water was over 90% though so those of us on sport hards were struggling pretty mightily.
 
The sports tyres have almost no tread grooves so the water has nowhere to go so you end up hydroplaning. Makes for a fun race though.
 
generationlost
not really news for me, this makes sense since comfort tires are analogous to street/summer tires in real life. street/summer tires have tread grooves and channels that dispels water from under the tire which prevents hydroplaning. semi slicks (sports tires) have minimal tread patterns and shallow tread blocks to improve dry grip at the expense of the ability to channel water away from under the tire.

With grip set on real, you can hydroplane with racing tires at speeds as low as 25-30 mph. Although I haven't put comfort softs on any car with more than 250 hp, I can tell how much more control comfort tires offer than the sports or racing tires in the rain.
Click to expand...

This is the answer we were all looking for 👍 . +1
 

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