Tyres · performance summer

Seven metres, in the wet, between the best and the worst.

Eight tyres, all in 235/35 R19, all on the same Golf GTI Clubsport, braked on the same wet surface. The shortest stop was 24.54 m. The longest was 31.48 m. Everything else on this page is downstream of that gap.

Seven metres, and what seven metres is

6.94 m is about a car and a half. But distance is the wrong way to feel it. Take the same braking event from 80 km/h: at the moment the Continental has come to a complete stop, the Kingboss is still travelling at about 38 km/h. That is the speed at which it would arrive at whatever the other car stopped in front of.

That figure is our arithmetic, not theirs, and it assumes steady deceleration across each tyre's own stopping distance — the standard way of comparing two braking distances. The distances are the measurement; the 38 km/h is what they mean.

The last-placed tyre wins the green metric

The Kingboss G866 finished last of eight. It braked 7.22 m longer in the dry and 6.94 m longer in the wet than the best in each. And on rolling resistance — the figure that decides fuel consumption, and the one that appears on the EU tyre label as an efficiency grade — it scored 8.8 kg/t, joint best of the eight, level with the Continental that out-braked it by seven metres.

The metric that sounds virtuous is the one a bad tyre can win. A tyre that grips less rolls more easily; that is the same physics seen from two ends. Read an efficiency grade on its own and the cheapest tyre in the test looks like the responsible choice.

Which numbers actually predict the one that matters

Five figures get published for tyres. They do not do equal work. Across these eight, braking varies by 23 to 28 per cent from best to worst. Aquaplaning speed varies by 4.3 per cent and noise by 3.4. Two of the five barely separate the field at all.

The more useful question is whether any published number predicts the one that matters. Correlate each column against wet braking across the eight:

Now remove the cheap tyre and watch the strongest number collapse. Dry braking predicts wet braking at +0.85 across all eight. Across the other seven it is +0.30. The apparent rule that a good tyre is good at everything turns out to be almost entirely one bad tyre being bad at everything — and among serious tyres, dry performance tells you very little about wet.

Rolling resistance carries no useful information about braking in either direction: −0.34 across the eight, +0.23 across the seven. It is a real measurement of a real thing, and that thing is fuel consumption. It is not a proxy for anything else, which is exactly how the last-placed tyre came to tie for the best score.

So: read wet braking. Read dry braking separately if you drive quickly in the dry, because it is close to a different question. Treat the other three as descriptions of the tyre you have already chosen rather than as grounds for choosing it.

The second-best dry tyre is nearly the worst wet

The Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 has the second shortest dry stop of the eight at 32.97 m — and the second longest wet stop at 28.04 m, 3.5 m behind the Continental. It is also the quietest tyre here at 71.3 dB.

That is not a fault. It is a semi-slick, built for a dry circuit, and it is doing precisely what it was designed to do. It is a warning about the phrase “best tyre”: on a wet commute the fifth-placed tyre in this test is a considerably worse choice than several below it.

Eight tyres, one size, one car

Buying, and why we link a search rather than a listing

On the measured evidence the Continental SportContact 7 is the one to buy for a road car: shortest wet stop of the eight, third overall, and joint best rolling resistance. The Pirelli won the test on dry pace and handling, which matters more if your driving is dry and quick; it gives up 0.35 m in the wet, which is a rounding error next to the seven metres at the other end of the chart.

Every link below goes to an Amazon search, not to a listing. A tyre listing is one size, and your car almost certainly takes a different one from the 235/35 R19 that was tested — so a single link would send most readers to a tyre that does not fit. Amazon's own fitment check lives on the results page, which is where the size question actually gets answered.

• Continental SportContact 7 on Amazon Shortest wet stop of the eight, at 24.54 m
• Pirelli P Zero R on Amazon Test winner; shortest dry stop at 31.70 m

Affiliate links — we earn a commission at no extra cost to you and it does not change what we recommend. Check the size on your door jamb or your existing sidewall before ordering, and note that Amazon lists fitting as a separate service. How this site makes money.

What this test cannot tell you

1. Your size. One size on one car. Compound and construction change between sizes, so the ranking is sound and the absolute distances belong to this fitment.
2. Wear. Every figure here is from a new tyre. A tyre at 3 mm brakes very differently in the wet from one at 8, and no test in this comparison measures the worn case.
3. Cold. These are summer tyres, tested warm. Below about 7 °C the compound stiffens and the wet figures do not hold.
4. Longevity. Nothing here says which tyre lasts. A cheap tyre that wears out in half the miles is not half the price.