MORE TYRES = MORE SAFETY. IT'S SCIENCE.
We’re 100% sure that the folk at Driven Media and the folk here at SXdrv would get on like that proverbial house on fire (a really weird analogy that one) because the things they get up to are exactly the kinds of things we’d get up to. We’ve been following their exploits with tyres and tyre testing and so far things did not disappoint. The first mad thing was when they took their ideas to a Caterham 270R, a beast of a track toy, and they swapped out the usual intermediate / semi-slick tyres to see what Pirelli Formula 1 tyres would do. While a tyre swap sounds like a simple affair, in this case, there are no aftermarket wheels that can fit the tyres and so that meant adapters had to be machined up to be able to fit actual Formula 1 race wheels on. The rubber to tarmac may not have had the desired results, but we think the resulting aesthetics were on point.
The Caterham is almost an open-wheeler and so the wheels didn't look too out of place, probably because we’re used to seeing these kinds of cars in race-ready track-spec. As we started thinking about these wheels on a normal streetcar, the Driven Media chaps did not disappoint and for their next instalment of regulated madness, they slapped the very same Pirelli Formula 1 tyres and wheels onto a Toyota MR2. Unlike the Caterham, these massive Pirellis do look very out of place on a Toyota MR2, but at the same time, we love the way it looks. A Toyota MR2 is ever so slightly slower than the Caterham (read: miles slower) and of course even more so than an F1 car the tyres are intended for, and that meant in this case things didn’t look as cool, and worked even less.
For the next instalment of very weird tyre testing, Driven Media once again borrowed the Caterham 270R to test their theory of more wheels and tyres being better. I mean it makes sense, if four good tyres make your car safe, then surely doubling that up will double up the safety too? Four tyres should mean more grip in any condition, and grip is the whole purpose of a tyre. With some fancy engineering, the crew managed to fit eight tyres to the Caterham and then took it out for some testing on real-world streets and also on the track. The track testing is great because they added in the benchmark results of the Caterham on it’s usual intermediate weekend track day tyres. What do you reckon the double-up of tyres would do to the test results?
Take a look at the YouTube video that follows on the antics with fitting F1 tyres to the Caterham, then to a Toyota MR2, where they now double up the amount of wheels to see what effect it has on driving everywhere: We Put 8 Tires on this Car to Make it FASTER | Driven Media
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