Vredestein knows that Grassroots Motorsports knows a thing or two about performance tires. And they know that our readers do, too. That's why they came to us with a simple request: Find five readers worthy of a set of Vredestein's latest performance tires, their Ultrac Vorti and Ultrac Vorti R. Over the next six months, you'll be seeing …
Excellent documentation. I'm curious to see how the tires look after a few days of street driving.
I had wondered what became of this, great review! The amount of center rib wear is crazy to me. Looks like these will be another solid summer tire choice for spiritited road driving and maybe an occasional track day. I'm very curious to see how they do on a much lighter car.
Yes, awesome write up. Vredestein got their moneys worth with you, Thanks.
Thank you for the clarity in your reporting.
I think the 200 tire is liable to have a stiffer sidewall than the 300. It may be that tracking a heavy, powerful car is just too much for them. You air them up enough that they won't roll, it is over inflated and screws with the foot print of the tread.
Do you remember how the weather was for your track day? Was it particularly hot or cool? Is your car modified? How much actual track time do those excellent, high contrast photographs represent?
Does the car normally beat up on the fronts like that with the other tires you’ve used? Is the alignment stock?
Other than adding a tranny cooler and upgrading the FWD shaft lock, the car is a stock Track Edition. That does bring with it a slightly lower weight, better brake cooling, and slightly more aggressive suspensions settings. I run OEM alignment settings and it had been checked/re-set just a month before this track day.
The wear you see in the pictures is from five 15 minute sessions on the Thunderbolt track at NJMP. The weather was cool (in the 50s) in the morning but got up to the mid 70s by the end of the day. There was very little cloud cover. The Lightning track is even harder on the LF tire.
It is not the worst track day wear I've seen. The Bridgestone RE71 fronts wore out completely within 2 track days. Since the rears were OK, I just got another set of fronts and swapped them on the rims between track days. The OEM Dunlop run-flats were the best for wear and lasted for 4 track days. If the Pirellis hadn't gotten one bad blister they might have lasted longer. I have checked with Tire Rack about having them heat cycle a set of street tires before shipping them (like they do for racing tires) and they will do it so I'm thinking that might help with wear/longevity without sacrificing grip. I'm certainly not going to waste a whole track day for one heat cycle so they can cure afterwards and nothing on the street can heat them up like track use.
The GT-R is just really heavy (3890 lbs) so I doubt there are any tires that can deal with that much weight on the track w/o wearing relatively quickly. I did swap the Vredesteins left-to-right after the clean-up and photo session, so next track day (maybe 2 Nov) the other front tire will see the most abuse.
Dunlops fronts after 4 track days
Bridgestone fronts after 2 track days
Pirelli blister after 4 track days
The Bridgestone RE71R are autocross tires and will overheat just doing back to back single driver autocross runs so I’m not surprised two track days on that car killed them.
What are these Vredestein tires supposed to be? Max or Ultra High summers? Also did you get the R version or the regular one?
PDoane said: I have checked with Tire Rack about having them heat cycle a set of street tires before shipping them (like they do for racing tires) and they will do it so I'm thinking that might help with wear/longevity without sacrificing grip. I'm certainly not going to waste a whole track day for one heat cycle so they can cure afterwards and nothing on the street can heat them up like track use.
I got interesting questions asking for it, but they heat cycled some street tires for me once. We were only running street tires due to size issues on our stock rims. We went from killing a front tire in 8 hours to barely stretching out 14.5 but that is very worth it and all without us having to heat cycle them. I drove to the track on crappy old tires, swapped on the heat cycled tires, and raced for 2 days. Much cheaper to pay for heat cycling than to pay for a test session to heat cycle.
They were Ultrac Vorti, not the Ultrac Vorti R. The Rs didn't come in the OEM sizes. The Vredestein website doesn't give a "Performance rating" like Max or Ultra High. It does say
"Powerful cars equipped with the Ultrac Vorti enjoy a high level of steering precision, grip and safety while driving at high speeds"
and they do have a "Y" speed rating
I have Vorti Rs on my 16 Mustang, have done 6 track days with them and they are wearing very well, no weirdness at all. I find you can easily overheat the fronts if you screw up a couple of corners in a row with overly aggressive entry, they like to be kept hooked up. But I'm very happy with them. Now I just wish I could find more, they're almost invisible up here these days.
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