Tire-Reviews

In this video I will finally be answering whether a narrow tyre or a wide tyre is better on snow and

ice. Firstly why are we even having this argument? Well there are two contrasting theories both of

them technically correct coming at different sides of the coin. The first and this is the one you'll

most often hear from the internet experts is that a narrower tyre puts more pressure in contact with

the surface below thus generating more grip. Now this is technically correct for physical grip but

ignores the fact tyres also produce grip through chemical interactions and a tyre's footprint

actually changes as the tyre gets narrower, the footprint gets longer. It's a bit of a shame that

this one isn't strictly true because if it was a LaFerrari or any other hypercar would be running

around on these 205Y tyres which would look hilarious. The contrasting argument is that a

wider tyre just puts more down, more compound in contact with the surface generating more grip

For an all-season and winter tyre more sipes which are the little cuts in the rubber that give the

tire edges to cut into the surface and grip and everything else being equal a wider tire will have

more void in the tread pattern to pack in snow and as snow grips snow that also gives its advantage

As this has been quite a difficult one to work out I've needed the help of a tire company and

thankfully Hankook tires have once again stepped up and helped out. So huge thank you to Hankook

They have provided all the way from a 205 wide tire on a 16 inch wheel up to a 275 wide tire on

19-inch wheel and they did all the maths about wool sizes spaces and everything needed for this

BMW 3 Series. The tyres are slightly different the smallest is the Hankook Winter Isept RS3

and then the bigger three and one of my favourite winter tyres the Hankook Isept Evo 3. So excellent

winter tyres to be getting on with this let's finally find out let's get on with the testing

For snow handling I started with the smallest and ran to the biggest and then looped back around to

the smallest for verification so that means I started with the 205 on the 16-inch wheel moved

to the 225 square on the 18 inch wheel then moved to the 255 square on a 19 inch wheel and then I

put the 275 just on the rear now we couldn't fit 275 all the way around sadly but it will give us

some interesting data points especially during the traction test I'll do later starting with the

smallest the 205 now this is quite a small wheel and tire for this car but you know what it felt

great we know the RST is a good winter tire and everything just felt easy it felt like it had good

levels of grip. If anything, compared to the best tyres, it did feel a little bit disconnected

a little bit more disconnected than the bigger wall sizes. And that was especially noticeable on turning where you were just kind of guessing a little bit more when the car would actually turn and there was a slight delay But the benefit of the higher sidewall was this track isn perfectly smooth

and there are some ups and downs and some undulations and over those, it was the least effective

So some of the other tyres would break into understeer or oversteer as the surface undulation changed

but the smaller one just soaked up. It felt the most stable mid-corner

but it just felt a little bit more disconnected. Switching to the slightly wider 225

Now, this was the biggest jump subjectively, but I've got to use the word biggest a little bit carefully

because it was very small. The turning was a bit crisper. So the car, you turned

it just felt a little bit more crisper on initial turning, but then it would pick up understeer

a little bit more quickly. The overall connectiveness, is that a word

How connected you felt to the driving experience was improved. Now, I imagine that's largely to do

with the much smaller sidewall, going from a 60 profile to a 45 profile

and the bigger wheel size. but the differences were incredibly tiny. In fact, I even wrote in my notes

if this is the differences between the 205 and the 225, I'm not really gonna have much to talk about

Foreshadowing? Maybe. Probably correct. Moving to the 255 square, yes, you've guessed it

Everything was just a little bit more direct. Very, very difficult to notice

between the 225 and the 255, even with that extra width and the extra inch of wheel size

And you just had to be a little bit more delicate and a little bit more prepared with your actions because when we went from grip to no grip to that

transition sliding period it was just a little bit more abrupt and it happened a little bit more

quickly but the margins are very small interestingly when i put the 275 wide on the rear the balance

almost came back or the the progressiveness stepped up a little bit on the rear axle the 275 just

slid a little bit more nicely it gave you a tiny bit more control i guess it felt more like the 225

or even the 205, that big wide rear tire just allowed you to play gracefully with the rear

which I really enjoyed. The differences were, however, I'm going to remind you, extremely small

Now, at this point, you're probably screaming at me for times, which is completely fair, you've listened to me talk. I'll put them on screen now. The entire difference between the

narrowest and the widest was a massive 1.8%, and it wasn't actually the narrowest that was quickest

it was the 225, so one of the middle sizes. Now this 1 is smaller than the differences between a bad winter tire and a good winter tire or a good winter tire and an excellent winter tyre So so far for snow handling at least there just no point worrying about what tyre size you pick

but there is lots of point worrying about what tyre you pick. But let's go and see if I change my mind during traction testing

Traction and braking turned out to be quite interesting. Snow Traction had the narrow 205 wide tyre offering the best 0-35 kph times at 6.35 seconds

which was nearly 5% better than the 225 and over 6% better than the 255 and the 275 could manage

so it seems that the narrower tyre can't quite turn as well but longitudinally it offers more grip

but wait Snow Braking had the 225 back at the front almost matching the 255 with the

narrowest tire now the worst 4.5% behind so that is not what I expected what about ice well ice

testing is even more difficult than snow so we ran the group twice which resulted in over 100

acceleration and braking runs for the four configurations to ensure the data is as pure

as it possibly could be the results well the narrow 205 was back at the front offering the

best traction and the narrow 205 was back at the back offering the worst braking again pretty much

mirroring what we found on snow maybe averaging things out will help us get a better picture

excluding snow handling the narrowest tire was the best in the snow with the widest being the worst

when we averaged out ice performance the narrowest tire was also the best but this time the widest

combination of tires was second best and the 225 that did so well in snow struggled more on ice

so let's finally average out the directions the narrow tire does have a clear advantage in both

the traction test so this is at least one result I'm happy with the narrower tire is just better in

traction however when we averaged out braking it was clearly the worst which just still doesn't

quite make sense to me overall from all the testing the narrowest tire scored the most points

but as I've stressed a number of times at this point the testing was extremely close and you'll

find a bigger variance between a bad and a good winter tire than the differences we have in this

test the obvious elephant in the room is the different tread patterns on the narrow 205

Sadly, this was the only way of getting this range of sizes possible

But if we just look at the 225, 255 and 275, which all have the same tread pattern

it's fair to say that width just doesn't really matter at all. And since filming this at the start of the year

I seen some other tests and they sound exactly the same So what can we learn from all this testing Well I think there three key takeaways here In terms of handling in terms of outright grip around the handling lap there was almost nothing in it Yes there were some subjective differences between the 16 inch and the 19 inch

but this has got a very high sidewall so that's what gives you that subjective handling difference

In terms of outright performance, if you look at a winter tyre test there was less of a difference

between these two as there was between a very good winter tyre and just a good winter tyre. So

i don't think you can really decide a width is better for handling or not in terms of traction

the narrow tire definitely seemed a little bit better both on snow and ice but in terms of

braking which was essentially reverse traction it didn't quite live up to the wider tires

just to quickly drive home that point i have the data from this year's tyre reviews winter tire test

which was tested at the same time on the same vehicle at the same location in that comparative

test of 11 winter tires even ignoring the cheap budget tire the delta between a good and bad

winter tar and snow handling was over six seconds a lap whereas in this test it was just two seconds

in snow traction it was a three quarters of a second difference here it was half a second

and in snow braking there was a three meter difference whereas we had just a difference

of half a meter in this test between the same tar in different sizes most people will not have the

option of a 205 or a 275 wide winter tar in their vehicle they'll be looking at the differences of

maybe 20 millimeters a 205 or a 225 or a 225 and even a 255 that's probably quite rare in the

real world as well. That means the differences between these, these or these is essentially

nothing. So stop worrying about how wide your winter tyre is and start worrying about how good

the winter tyre you're fitting is because that's going to make a much bigger difference. Fit a

winter tyre like this Hankook Winter Isept Evo 3. It's an outstanding winter tyre as is this RS3

So Hankook are making some exceptional winter tyres and their all-season and summer tyres are

excellent too. Thank you so much to Hankook for supporting this test. Let me know what you've

decided from all the data whether you're going to try and size down you know what it does make

sense to fit a narrow winter tire in the winter because you can put a smaller wheel on and protect

your big alloy so on a car like this maybe you're running a 19 inch or an 18 inch wheel on a 255

and maybe you want to go to a 225 on a 16 or 17 inch steel wheel just to protect your summer wheels

that has a lot of merit but in terms of width just stop worrying about it pick a good winter tire

not a wide winter tire or a narrow winter tire anyway let me know your thoughts any questions

please ask below and as always, safe motoring