Given
77%
while driving a
Vauxhall Omega
(235/45 R17 W) on
a combination of roads
for 10,000
spirited miles
Along with the (no longer available) Goodyear Eagle F1 GSD3, these are probably one of the best sets of tires I've ever had fitted to my car. Whilst they do have a few very minor points against them, in terms of pure grip and safety (even when pushed hard) these Vredestein Ultrac Sessanta tires do a great job of holding the road.
Grip in the dry is awesome for both acceleration/braking and cornering, better than the old Goodyear Eagle F1s they replaced.
Despite their somewhat unique tread pattern, wet grip is equally impressive although I feel/suspect that the newer Eagle F1s would be fractionally better. In terms of handling, it would be hard to fault these tires.
Progressiveness and feedback are good and you do get a sense of when the tires are reaching their limit of adhesion, again better than the old F1 GSD3 tires they replaced (which although very grippy would just snap away when the limit was reached), but I still think they could be just a little better in this area (if that's how you wish to drive around).
Comfort is good for this type of higher performance tire and it doesn't give a 'solid' ride, but leads me on to the minor irritations. Road feedback, whilst still good is not as good as some other great tires, and the Ultrac Sessanta just doesn't give you as good a sense of being connected. I suspect that is more down to the tire being a bit softer than others. Depending on what you want you may see this as a good or bad thing.
The real areas I can fault them on are:
Wear is not a great aspect of these tires, but there's no reason you wouldn't see maybe 10000 miles out of a set even with slightly spirited driving.
Also road noise. Inside the car there is no issue, but if you have your windows open you can definitely hear them at speed. Also, and this may be down to my particular tire size, at certain speeds they can make a particularly irritating noise (again, on the outside, not inside the car). On the plus side though, as they have worn down, they haven't really gotten worse.