“With the new-generation SportContact 7 we have a tyre designed to deliver safe and predictable handling in wet and dry conditions while meeting the needs of performance car drivers, whether using their sporty vehicles on the road or at a track,” says Martin Buday, MD of Continental Tyre South Africa.
The new tyre sees Continental redefine the standards of performance, generating high levels of trust in the handling characteristics of its new flagship tyre. The Sport Contact 7 is a product that meets the latest market trends, as cars have become around 10% heavier, while engine performance has increased by almost 30%.
With an asymmetrical, adaptive tread design, the new SportContact 7 adapts to dry and wet roads, ensuring precise handling and cornering stability, along with exceptional control, safety and driving confidence, even at high speeds.
While driving on wet roads, the tyre’s footprint ends at the point of the highest water removal in the tread, to offer outstanding grip when braking, accelerating and cornering. When cornering on dry roads, the footprint shifts to the outer shoulder, which is designed to transmit the highest forces for stable handling. New ‘locking elements’ in the outer shoulder ensure further stability, only enabling limited movement of the tread for high ride stability.
Conventional sports tyres react differently to different vehicle models, determined by the weight, size and engine of the car in question. Accordingly, the specifications of the SportContact 7 are adapted to each vehicle class. Continental developed new technologies, suitable for driving on the road and on the track, that is used depending on the tyre size which ensures that the typical driving feel of the SportContact family is retained, irrespective of vehicle. This includes a design tailored to different vehicle classes.
The third technological building block of the new SportContact 7 is the BlackChili rubber compound, which has been precisely adapted to the very rigid, low-profiled tyre design. Tyre engineers and chemists at Continental had to balance out various conflicting objectives to achieve excellent handling characteristics, while also significantly increasing mileage.
An innovative mixing compound technology was developed which, together with the tread design, enables significant progress in handling characteristics.
Continental’s internal tests provided impressive values when comparing the SportContact 7 and its popular predecessor, the SportContact 6. Service life is extended by 17%, mileage on the racetrack increases by 10% wet braking distances are reduced by 8%, and the new SportContact 7 is 6% better in dry braking too. Handling and grip in both wet and dry conditions has also benefitted from the latest advancements.
The new Continental SportContact 7 is available in 47 sizes, ranging from 18 to 23-inch diameters. It has been developed for passenger cars with sporty attributes as well as supercars, and has already been selected for original equipment (OE) fitment by Maserati on its Levante and Quattroporte models.
The variety of vehicles is wide-ranging, including the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio as well as the RS series from Audi, and the sporty M series from BMW. Compact cars include the Mini Cooper S, Volkswagen Golf R and Renault Megane RS. Suitable sizes are also available for various vehicles from Porsche, Mercedes-AMG, Lamborghini and McLaren.
