Tire Review - Bridgestone Potenza S02

Cars tested with these tires:
- Opel Tigra Mk1 1.4i with 115hp, lowered and with aggressive front cambers.

Tests performed:
- I went through 2 set's of thes.

Dry grip:
- It's an old but good tire. The compound has a good honest grip. It will grip better while hot, but the cold grip is very respectable.

Wet grip:
- Good wet grip. The compound clearly works right "off the line".

Aquaplaning resistance:
- Excellent Probably one of the best I've tried. It's a real water pump, If you loose traction, and you don't have an LSD, the wheel spin resulting will clear water faster, making it regain grip very easily.
- I can remember a trip I had in the pouring rain, passing a road used by lot's of heavy loaded trucks (making it sulked and deformed, creating almost 2 continuous pools right where the wheels pass). I was literally fooling around in the water ignoring the fact that I was pulling out so much water, that the guy behind me (in a Volkswagen Sharan) was having the nightmare of it's life. When I pulled for gas he followed just to ask what was I running on. We was amazed how much water I was pulling out and why was I driving in the water while he had to drive on the road side to be able maintain grip.

Progressiveness:
- Good. The let go in both wet or dry is progressive and gives good warning.

Integrity maintenance:
- It's a very good tire. You can abuse it all you want and it will wear evenly and with all it's parts. I've made some very difficult drives passing some road-holes while cornering floored (enough to need alignment afterwards) and the tires pulled through.

Compound:
- It's a soft rubber compound with little wear resistance. Not the best compound form BS in this measure, but very grippy.

Longevity:
- Not brilliant. If you use it in a FF car layout, and drive hard in the summer, the front tires will not endure long.

Coherence:
- The tires side-walls are very good. The tire can go through hard bends keeping the contact patch all the way through.
- The compound is also very stable and even if you decide to run a mountain pass the entire day long, they will wear, they will get hot, but no grease will sweat out of it... it will grip all the way up the temperature range.

Balance:
-  Not a single balance problem. The tires went through it's life with no maintenance at all. Very well balanced from factory.

Load Behaviour:
- Best used in FR or MR layouts. If you push it too hard with an AWD or FF car they will easily wear out.
- The heavier the car is, the worse this will be. However, the tire will endure heavy and powerful cars with ease...just wear faster.