Continental pride themselves on safety, and their tires often win ‘best in wet’ performance in tire tests. This means while sometimes they're not be the most dynamic tires on the market, they always safe due to scoring highly under wet and dry braking tests.

With this in mind, Continental's take on the track day market was never going to be a straightforward affair. Track day tires are designed for maximum steering precision, which can often lead to a nervous balance, and they target ultimate dry lap time, which often leaves important safety criteria such as wet braking and aquaplaning resistance compromised.

The answer? The Continental Force Contact - an 'extreme performance' tire.  This category of tire sits above ultra-high performance and maximum performance tires, which are the sort of tires fitted to fast road cars, but below the track day segment due to a slightly more rounded approach to extreme performance. Think of an extreme performance tire as a tire you can hit with maximum attack on track, but you don’t have to be worried being caught in the rain on the way home. Perhaps the perfect compromise.

The tire

So, how does the tire achieve its unique blend of performance?  Developed with some of the world’s  leading  tuners such  as  AC  Schnitzer and Techart, the tire features a macroblock design, which when combined with the wide circumferential grooves in the middle of the tread gives an excellent steering response plus the ability to evacuate water, meaning aquaplaning is less of an issue for the Continental tire. This same feature, along with the black chilli compound technology also gives the tire excellent traction, braking performance and grip in both the wet and dry.

The drive

Our first experience with the Continental Force Contact was on a Jaguar F-Type, wearing 255/35 R20 front tires and 295/30 R20 on the rear, around the sunny roads of Malaga. To say the tire delivered on its promise is an understatement. The Jaguar F-Type is a highly capable vehicle on any tire, but on the Force Contact it really came alive. The front tire offered immense steering precision, communicating exactly what was happening during corner entry, while the rear was eager to play with plenty of feedback at the limit of grip during corner exit. The overall grip levels of the tires were higher than a normal road tire, and the steering loaded up nicely as you reached the limit of grip.

Sadly we didn’t get any wet running with the tire, but looking at the data from other group tests the Force Contact offers a strong performance when compared directly to its rivals.

Is the Force Contact a tire you’d use on a vehicle you drive every day? Probably not. But it is a tire you can use confidently on a second fast road / track car, without panicking at the first sign of rain.

If you’re lucky enough to be ordering an F-Type in the near future, make sure you consider these tires, which are available as a factory upgrade option!