Comparing the Goodyear Eagle RS to the status quo | Project C5 Corvette Z06

In addition to a new engine, our Z06 Corvette left for Time Trials Nats with new rubber, too: Goodyear’s new Eagle RS, a DOT-approved R-compound race tire. This Goodyear has experienced some early success in SCCA GT2 competition, where it has won a couple of National road races and turned faster laps than the costlier Hoosier tires the bulk of the class runs.

The first thing we noticed upon mounting the Goodyears is that they’re big. Even though they were labeled with the same sizes as our old BFGoodrich g-Force Rival S set–315/30R18 fronts and 335/30R18 rears–the Goodyear stack sat about an inch taller. 

Our fender wells noticed, too, as the Goodyears rubbed in places the BFGs never had, but this problem mostly solved itself within a few laps. We did do a little extra trimming of the rear fender liners and also added a 3mm wheel spacer to create some additional clearance on the inside edge. 

Photography Credit: J.G. Pasterjak

While we weren’t able to do a comprehensive A/B test, we ran the BFG tires at the 2019 Time Trial Nats and could compare data traces. The giant, flaming asterisk here is that the 2021 event was ungodly hot. Ambient temps were north of 100 degrees, with the pavement topping 135 for almost all of our sessions. Then rain almost every evening delivered a green track each day.

Conversely, conditions for 2019 were beyond ideal: low 70s, slightly overcast and lots of rubber on track. So, take this comparison as an expanded opinion rather than hard data.

Our favorite thing about the Goodyears: their drivability. They’re eminently predictable and tossable, and they don’t punish the driver too badly for stepping outside their desired envelope. In high-speed corners, like NCM’s Turn 5, we could simply toss in the car at 110 mph and let it drift past the apex with a great deal of control and predictability. Note that we were running 3 degrees of negative camber in the front and 2.5 in the rear; according to the Goodyear engineers, the tires like a lot of camber. Reports from other drivers in more camber-challenged cars on different-sized RSs have not been as favorable, but on our Corvette we found them absolutely brilliant, especially in the high-speed sections.

The Goodyears also excelled at corner exit. Our newfound additional horsepower certainly helped move us down the straights, but even in the clearly inferior conditions, the Goodyears seemed to do a better job of putting down power. 

The Goodyear speed trace (in blue) looks great in fast corners, carrying more speed through the initial part of a 100-plus-mph sweeper than the BFGoodrich g-Force R1 S (in red).

In lower-speed sections, however, the Goodyear needed a bit more throttle manipulation to keep the nose in line. Track conditions certainly didn’t help, so we look forward to a proper comparable-condition test.

They did seem less than stellar in lower-speed and off-camber sections–particularly NCM’s Sinkhole, a frustrating combination of long corners, many of which fall away unhelpfully if you stray too far from the inside edge of the track. 

Sinkhole is perplexing and a test of patience in the best of conditions, but the Goodyears particularly didn’t appreciate its combination of low speeds, high steering angles, bad road camber and scorching surface temps. Our data traces in Sinkhole showed we were losing a bit of time to the BFGs, and pushing harder in that section only got us further behind.

But that certainly doesn’t take these tires out of contention as a serious class contender, even against the reigning purple monsters. The Goodyears’ brilliance and drivability in high-speed sections is beyond impressive, and we’re excited about getting them lined up for a proper apples-to-apples test.

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