The tyres are an important part of the car as they are the only parts that connect it directly to the road. And that’s one of the reasons constant developments are made in this industry. The ContiSportContact 5P was a tyre that we saw on many high-performance cars, but now the 5P has been replaced with the all-new SportContact 6.
What’s new?
The SportContact 6 makes use of a few innovations from Continental, leading the brand to claim it is its most dynamic tyre to date. These innovations include a re-invention of the chemical composition found in the tread, the tread design and the structure of the tyre itself. As a result, the new design achieves a performance boost of up to 14% in some areas in both dry and wet conditions.
Black Chilli
This compound makes use of a something called Black Chilli, which consists of special grip resins. This was seen in the 5P but for the new model it was fine-tuned to mesh in with the surface of the road. The best way to describe the Black Chilli compound is to compare it to a strip of microscopic suction cups that provides maximum grip to the surface.
Force vectoring technology
This is the complicated part of the tyre. The force vectoring technology is found in the design placed along the central ribs and manages the lateral forces through the tyre as it changes direction. This is possible thanks to an improved bracing with asymmetric flank angles and chamfered edges making the design more rigid and stable.
The outer shoulder of the tyre makes use of an advanced macro block design. This contains large shoulder blocks that create a complete unit for further stability under fast cornering conditions.
What sort of cars is this tyre created for?
The SportContact 6 comes in a variation of 41 sizes between rim sizes 19- to 23-inches, meaning that it is best suited for high-performance cars such as the Mercedes-AMG GT, Audi R8, Jaguar F-Type and Porsche 911. This tyre can also sustain speeds from up to 350 km/h.
The SportContact 6 is fitted to the current Honda Civic Type R, which coincidentally is what it used to achieve its record-setting time of 7 min 50,63 sec around the Nurburgring. Continental says that the SportContact 6 is a multifunctional tyre that can be used on the road and on the track. The tread depth is only 6 mm, but Continental says it will wear down a lot slower than traditional 8 mm deep tyres (depending on how you use it of course).
How does it feel?
To the touch, the new ContactSport 6 feels like a very soft compound and the usage of the Black Chilli technology is evident. The tread is visually shallower than what you would find in older-design tyres but the technical design is evident and inspires confidence if you understand how it is supposed to work.
Having only had the opportunity to experience these tyres on the Zwarkops racetrack at the wheel of a CLA45 AMG and on the Civic Type R that joined us on performance shootout (which was in the wet), the first thing to notice about the SportContact 6 is that the road noise is significantly lower. A slight screeching can only be heard when the tyre is pushed to its very limit.
Grip levels are high which works well with something like the CLA45 AMG and its all-wheel-drive system. What I found most impressive about this tyre, however, was the consistency of the wear, which was minimal and spanned across the surface of the tyre rather than just one section. This suggests that the entire surface of the tyre is being used to find grip on the surface.