Welcome into the World of Westlake
Rovaniemi, Finland( March 29, 2015) __ ZC RUBBER held the Westlake winter tyre test at the Arctic Driving Center, which is a popular place for tyre performance test of many world famous tire companies and has accumulated 30-year long experiences in tyre performance test so far. It is remarkable in some points that the given report by ZC RUBBER showed.
Starting in January 2015, the German Westlake team planned the winter tyre test session to compare actual Westlake winter products with competitors. After preparing for several months, everything was set up, including a nearly 4 kilometers circuit with all areas of winter test procedures: circle with 200 meters diameter, handling session, braking zone from 50 km/h to zero, a 18 meters distance slalom, a hill climb session of 15% etc.
Each testing group consisted of the base tyre and two other products. Volkswagen Golf TSI, the three front-wheel test cars, had a locally made tire as base product (100%) and a tyre from one international brand of as base for BMW 316i, which is rear wheel drive. The base tyre results would reveal that if the track may change by weather, temperatures etc.
The test candidates for the Golf were 195/65 R 15 in SW 606 studded, SW 608, SW 618 and other famous tyres. For the BMW, the tyres were 205/55 R 16 SW 606 studded, SW 618 and other tyres from well-known brands.
Every car drove with two people who would change the seats after every two laps, then changing the test car. The pilot had to drive constantly to get best results and the copilot must measure all the times, noting these results on a sheet for analysis. All subjective remarks from the drivers were also noticed.
The test result showed by ZC RUBBER is notable and available. The studded tyres like the SW 606, the Finland home-made tyres had no advantage on snowy roads, only on black ice. Every modern tyre with intelligent sipes had better results than the studded tyres.
The test winner on snowy condition in both dimensions and on both sort of cars was the SW 618, which was a big surprise for ZC RUBBER. The WESTLAKE 618 was really convincing on snow and even on ice! This tyre has huge potential on winter roads and is on the same level as the best European tyres or even higher! Also it has a very smooth pattern mixture so that it will not reach the best results on dry surface sand mileage. However, ZC RUBBER will do further tests on both wet and dry conditions with some of the candidates in the near future.
