Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport Review On The Golf GTI MK6

What are Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport Tyres?

Watch any race and the talk eventually boils down to the choice of tyres as it still remains one of the great known performance factors of motorsport. Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres are great as track tyres while being practical enough to work as your regular summer tyres too. It can be even more intimidating when choosing tyres for a road car if you are looking for excellent performance without sacrificing practicality. It might seem like an impossible endeavour to find a road tyre that does not make you feel inadequate on a track or handicapped on the road but tyre technology has come a long way in recent years.

Why Are They Good For Our Golf GTI?

The Golf GTI represents the perfect niche for performance seekers from a car that isn’t massively powerful but can provide decent levels of thrill. This makes the Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport, in many ways, the perfect tyre for the Golf GTI.

It will be able to push the tyres on the track while being good enough to put their ability in the real world to the test as well. The DSG is also very good at transferring the 260 PS the Golf can produce onto the road. For now, this test was limited to the road but from what I experienced, these tyres should be a great performance boost for track days and I look forward to testing them.

What Have We Changed From?

I was aware that changing from a budget set of tyres to a performance-oriented set would have always felt like a big step up and it would have been difficult to really gauge how good these tyres were. Thankfully, the Golf had been previously fitted with a great set of Bridgestone Potenza tyres and any improvements in grip and performance had to be substantial to be readily apparent. Did the Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport live up to the expectations? Let us find out:

Dry Grip

As a summer tyre, the primary focus is to provide exceptional grip in dry conditions and the Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres achieve that with great confidence. Once the tyres are warm, they really come into their own. The Golf puts 260 PS through its front wheels and even then the Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres were able to transfer all of it onto the road, instead of letting most of it go up in smoke.

Even at higher speeds, there was very little, if any, road noise. The performance does drop a bit when the tyres are cold but that should not be an issue as they are pretty easy to warm up on a summer day. So you can start driving on a whole new level!

The increase in cornering stability is just astounding and every time you explore the levels of grip, it feels like it could go even faster.

The tyres hold their line really well, even under extreme braking and cornering. They inspire a new level of confidence in the car. It takes a lot of effort to get the tyres to lose grip and even then the car stays fairly in control. Even when I put the GTI through some rigorous driving, it felt like there was plenty of grip still available which means that the on-track capabilities of the Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport should be very impressive and a worthy investment for any car enthusiast.

Grippy tyres often come with the caveat of having a short lifespan and tyre degradation can be a real issue. We will report on this over time, but from secondary research initial reports seem to be pretty good.

While its overall lifespan would be lower than regular road tyres, they should hold up well enough to last for a decent amount of time. When talking about dry grip, I do have to touch on the subject of the operating window and normally, performance tyres work best in a certain window of  temperature and tyre pressure to get the maximum out of them. However, the Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres were surprisingly forgiving and it didn’t take too much effort to get them into their rather wide operating window. So, having fun with these tyres on the Golf was an easy proposition for the most part. Even with initial testing happening in November and December in the UK, they are soon very useable.

Handling Feel Impressions

Tyre grip is only a part of the equation as the primary function of a set of performance tyres is to make the driver feel as connected to the road as possible and the Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres do not disappoint on that front. Knowing what your car is doing all the time is very important in inspiring confidence, so that every last bit of performance can be extracted and these tyres offer great feedback.

What this means is that you can attack corners with a greater sense of purpose. You can easily feel when you have pushed the tyre too hard and this provides a great level of feedback to the driver. These tyres can hold a line quite well and will allow you to hit the apex of each corner with the delicate precision required to go as fast as the car can. Without a doubt, I feel that our Golf GTI feels more lively and they certainly inspire more confidence in me as the driver.

What does this mean on the road? The car will feel a lot more sure-footed and it will be equally at ease weaving through traffic as it would at tackling high-speed corners. You will also be able to acutely sense the change in grip levels as you are driving along, which will allow you to adjust your throttle and steering inputs accordingly, making for a safer drive.

All this comes at a price as the car will feel more lively and will take a bit of time to get used to if you are changing from basic OEM tyres. Another caveat is the drop in comfort levels. You will be able to feel the irregularities of the road surface a bit more over the OEM tyres which can be a good thing except when driving over rough roads. It is not overly uncomfortable or unbearable, the changes are minimal.

Wet Grip Testing

Wet grip is often the Achilles heel of most performance-oriented tyres and while the Eagle F1 SuperSport, of course, has less grip compared to the dry, it is not undrivable as many other performance tyres could be. Also find out more about wet testing these tyres in a BMW M2 here.

As we mentioned earlier, the Golf can put 260 PS of power through its front wheels which can be a scary proposition on wet roads but the Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres do a lot better than people would expect.

As long as you keep within reasonable speeds, the tyres feel great. There is none of that nervousness or twitchiness that is associated with cars on performance tyres in variable conditions. Even under very wet conditions, the tyres maintained a good level of grip. The caveat here is that you have to know the limitations of these tyres. They are primarily meant as a summer tyre, but they are great in the wet too.

The Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres help you get home safely and securely in case there is wet weather but if you try to push them too hard in wet conditions then they will lose grip, as you would expect.

I tried finding that drop-off point and it was well beyond what I expected it to be. They do not suffer that much more than OEM tyres would under wet conditions and as long as you are being sensible, driving in the wet with the Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres doesn’t feel like a big deal.

Road Noise

Often, when performance is the highest priority,  smaller details that can affect day to day driving can be missed and one area where the Bridgestone Potenza tyres suffered was with road noise and over long drives, it would get quite annoying.

The Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres are much better and the road noise is not that audible unless you pay close attention to it.

Do We Recommend Them For The VW Golf GTI MK6

As I mentioned at the beginning, performance tyres have to straddle the line between practicality and track performance and the Eagle F1 SuperSport leans more towards the practical side of things, but still with performance improvements and a better handling feel.

It is a great tyre for the summers with a few track days thrown in. It is practical enough to be used as an everyday tyre option in the UK. In fact, in dry conditions, these tyres will make you really enjoy driving, bringing some extra performance from your car. That is, however, expected from a performance-oriented set of tyres.

These tyres can really hold their own when the weather takes a turn for the worse and allow you to drive without getting into scary situations. It is only when the weather and road conditions become extreme that the Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres start to falter a bit. We haven’t done a track day with the Golf GTI yet, but driving on normal roads gave us an idea of how it would perform at a track. As these tyres are the more practical versions of their SuperSport range, they are the entry-level track tyre from the SuperSport range with an R and RS version available. The base SuperSport is meant more for the casual track days and as a stepping stone for those looking to push a bit harder.

Does it suit the Golf GTI MK6? In a word, Yes! The Golf as any car enthusiast can attest to is a fun car to drive and the Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres make it even better. These tyres injected new life into what was already an exciting car and made getting behind the wheel a real pleasure. If you are looking to spruce up a regular performance car into something that is fun to drive while being practical and dependable enough to still serve as your everyday car, then these tyres are worth a look. To conclude, if you have a Golf the Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres have passed all the performance metrics that we would be looking for from the tyre very well and they 100% suit the driving characteristics of this car.

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