Tire Speed Rating
Your Performance Rating
“GET YOUR FREE TIRE QUOTE IN SECONDS”
What is it about your tire that lets your vehicle brake in time when a child darts onto the street, or swerve to miss a deer bolting from a bush? It’s the stability of your tire’s tread, the construction of the carcass, the compound of the rubber. It’s your tire speed rating, or, to be more accurate, your tire’s performance rating.
People refer to that last letter of the tire size on the sidewall of your tires as ‘tire speed rating’—the maximum speed a tire can sustain for a certain period of time without risk of tire failure. But it’s not just about speed. It’s about performance— how your tires get rid of heat and how they brake, corner, grip and swerve just in time.
In fact, your safety depends on the performance rating of your tires, and yet many drivers aren’t aware of the role they play in keeping their rubber on the road. As you get ready to switch to summer tires, and if you’re doing your research or shopping online, you need to know the tire size as well as the tire speed rating recommended by your vehicle manufacturer. One tire size could come in multiple speed ratings.
And with road trips and hot summer asphalt around the corner, it’s even more important to understand how performance rating influences the handling and safety of your vehicle.
What is speed rating or performance rating?
After years of blowouts and accidents caused by drivers flying down Germany’s Autobahn at top speeds, a global tire speed rating system was created to remind drivers of their tires’ limits. In the 1960s, there were only three ratings; now there are 14.
Today, those ratings indicate so much more about how a tire performs. Tires with higher speed ratings are better equipped to get rid of heat; they also offer better cornering, gripping and braking, which is why we think of it as a ‘performance rating.’ Tires that have been downgraded in speed rating flex and squirm under pressure, causing heat-build up and compromising traction and tire life—situations that can lead to blowouts, especially in the heat of summer.
That rating is based on rubber compound as well as tread stability, design and casing construction. Tires with bigger interlocking tread blocks squirm less than a lot of little tread blocks. Less squirming means more staying on the road.
How does speed rating impact your vehicle’s handling and safety?
Heat build-up
Heat is your tire’s number one enemy. Tires with low speed ratings flex and squirm under pressure, causing heat build-up.
And heat build-up, along with high temperatures—whether you’re on your morning commute or your way to the cottage—can have a big impact on your tire’s performance and durability. You could be risking tire degradation, reduced traction and even blowouts.
Tires with higher performance ratings are better equipped to get rid of heat, in part because they generally have higher quality construction and ply.
Braking
During one of our recent performance rating tests on hard braking in an emergency situation, a lower ‘S’ rated tire driving 100 kilometres per hour was still going almost 25 km/hr when the higher ‘V’ rated tire stopped. The ‘S’ rated tire took 39 metres to stop. The ‘V’ rated tire stopped in 35 metres.
Why? Performance rating has a huge impact on braking. Lower-rated tires will squirm and change shape under hard braking, taking longer to stop in emergency situations.
