In this video I will finally be answering whether
a narrow tire or a wide tire 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 most often hear from the internet experts, is that
a narrower Tire puts more pressure in contact with the surface below thus generating more grip.
Now this is technically correct for physical grip but it ignores the fact tires also produce
grip through chemical interactions and that a tire's footprint actually changes as the tire 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 hyper car would be running around on these 205 wide tires which
would look hilarious. The contrasting argument is that a wider Tire just puts more down, more
compound in contact with the surface generating more grip, and for an all season and winter tire
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 provided all
the way from a 205 wide tire on a 16-inch wheel up to a 275 wide tire on a 19-inch wheel, and
they did all the maths about wheel sizes spaces and everything needed for this BMW 3 Series.
The tires are slightly different, the smallest is the Hankook Winter I*Cept RS3, and then the
bigger three are one of my favorite winter tires, the Hankook Winter I*Cept EVO 3, so excellent
winter tires to be getting on with. 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-in wheel moved to the 225
square on the 18in wheel then moved to the 255 Square on a 19in 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 RS3 is a good winter tire and everything just felt easy it like it had good levels of
grip, if anything compared to the best tires it did feel a little bit disconnected a little bit
more disconnected than the bigger wheel sizes, and that was especially noticeable on turning where
you just 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't perfectly
smooth and there were some ups and downs and some undulations and over those it was the least
affected, some of the other tires 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, if is that a word, how connected you felt to the driving experience,
was improved, and I imagine that's largely to do with the much smaller sidewalk 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 going to have much to talk about... for shadowing? 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 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 1.8% is smaller than the differences between a bad
winter tire and a good winter tire, or a good winter tire and an excellent winter tire, so, so
far for snow handling at least, there's there's just no point worrying about what tire size you
pick, but there is lots of point worrying about what tire you pick. But let's go and see if I
changed my mind during traction [Music] Testing traction and braking turned out to be quite...
interesting! Snow traction had the narrow 205 wide tire offering the best 0 to 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 tire 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 in ice.
So let's finally average out the directions. The narrow tire does have a clear advantage in
both the traction tests 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 narrow 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 here I've seen some other tests and
they've found exactly the same. So what can we learn from all this testing, well I think there's
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 was 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 tire test there was less of a
difference between these two as there was between a very good winter tire and just a good winter
tire so I don't think you can really decide a width is better for handling or not. In terms of
traction, the narrower tire definitely seemed a little bit better both on snow and ice, but in
terms of braking, which is 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 tire in snow handling was over 6 seconds a lap whereas in this test it was just
2 seconds, in snow traction it was a 3/4, of a second difference here it was half a second, and
in snow braking there was a 3 meter difference, whereas we had just a difference of half a meter
in this test between the same tire in different sizes. Most people will not have the option of a
205 or a 275 wide winter tire on 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 tire is and start worrying about how good the winter tire your
fitting is, because that's going to make a much bigger difference. Fit a winter tire like this
Hankook Winter I*Cept EVO 3, it's an outstanding winter tire, as this this RS3, so Hankook are
making some exceptional winter tires and the All Season the summer tires 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 narrower
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 19in or an 18in wheel on a 255 and maybe you want to go to
a 225 on a 16 or 17in 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!
