Tire Review - Bridgestone Potenza S02 Pole Position

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

Tests performed:
- I went through 1 set's of these.

Dry grip:
- It's an old but excelent tire. The compound has an excellent grip. It will grip better while hot, but the cold grip is still better than most of it's competitors hot.

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.

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

Integrity maintenance:
- It's brilliant. You can abuse it all you want and it will wear evenly and with all it's parts.

Compound:
- It's a soft rubber compound with some silica and carbon in it. The wear resistance was very improved from the S02 without loosing grip. By far the best compound from BS.

Longevity:
- Brilliant. The best grip with the best wear resistance money can buy. The only problem would be it's price. I've switched from Bridgestone to Falken and Toyo because of the price. I can use a set of Bridgestones for 30.000Km, or spend the same amount of money in 2 sets of Falken or Toyo and do 20.000Km each. That's the ONLY reason.

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:
- Spectacular load behaviour. The "PolePosition" compound makes quite a difference.
- The tire will endure heavy and powerful cars without a sweat.