Six-Month Update: Vredestein Ultrac Vorti Tires on a 2000 BMW M5

Vredesteinknows 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’slatest performance tires, their Ultrac Vorti and Ultrac Vorti R. Over the next six months, you’ll be seeing feedback from these readers in the form of regular blog posts on our site.

Story and Photos by SpectroRacing

The Ultrac Vortis have thus far proven to be quiet, comfortable road tires worthy of long trips and daily driving, and competent on the track as well. I pondered what else I could do to put them through their paces. Seeing as this is Florida, the forecast suggested I could try them out for a rain-soaked track session to see how they behaved in the wet.

But as luck would have it, when I arrived at the FIRM, it was at most slightly damp, and drying. Left with the conundrum of how else to explore the characteristics of my Vredesteins, I concluded that there was only one responsible course of action left to take: I would hoon them, thoroughly.

And hoon I did. I was able to negotiate for a few solo laps, as to not scare the locals nor cause the corner workers to break out their black flags, so that I could perform a bit of overdriving in the name of science. The Vredesteins would stay sharp for, at best, a couple of laps when really abused. As I dialed in harder entry speeds and more slip angle to really get them deflecting, they started talking louder and more often. The grip fell off a bit, yet they remained predictable and controllable. I assumed that all of my throttle stabbing, hand brake yanking, and sliding about in the 2-ton sport sedan would cause the grip levels to fall completely off as the tires deteriorated into hot grease. However, instead of delaminating or peeling off in chunks like many street tires do when subjected to extreme heat, the Ultrac Vortis simply settled into a stable plateau of decreased, yet very usable grip. Lap after lap, they stayed there no matter how hard I beat on them, and eventually rising oil temps caused me to have to take my cool down lap and bring it in.

I was really hoping to send these out in a blaze of smoking glory (for science), but in the dry I simply couldn’t muster enough power to really roast the meaty 275s in the back. Sure, I could induce a slide through a corner, but as I poured the power on the car would simply straighten out and the Vortis would be ready for more.

When first mounting the Vredesteins, I was concerned if they would even survive six months of my regular M5 usage schedule. They are showing only normal, evenly-distributed wear, with no signs of chunking, delamination, or cording. I plan to get many more miles and laps out of these tires before they’re done!

I’ll reiterate my statement made before: these tires aren’t the best at any given task, but they’re very good at everything. They would make a great “only tire” if you didn’t have multiple wheel sets. They aren’t quite as comfortable or quiet as a Michelin PS4S, and they aren’t as razor-sharp or tenaciously grippy as an RE-71R or BFG Rival-S. They won’t keep peak grip lap after scorching lap like an RS4 will. But they will do all of these things nearly as well, all while being more daily-drivable than the autocross competition tires and arguably more durable on track than the premium street tires. This is a tire that you can drive your heavy V8 luxury sedan to a track day on, inducing full-throttle opposite-lock slides lap after punishing lap, and then drive home on to do it all over again the next weekend. That’s a real engineering achievement.

Comments

Displaying 1-9 of 9 commentsView all comments on the GRM forums

You'll need to log in to post.