Tramlining in Pirelli P-Zeros

[Spurshot]

To the tramlining mentioned, my experience is that when an asphalt road is somewhat rutted from heavy traffic, the tramlining can be terrible. My car with the stock Pirelli 245/274 setup is nearly uncontrollable in a rutted asphalt road. I think that particular issue is from the wide, low profile tires that run up on their corners in the rutting.

On the concrete freeways of Socal, there are many areas where the old road has been re-routed during road widening, etc., and there are grooves that are cut in the pavement that go in different direction than the lane. My car will follow the grooving a bit. I think that characteristic is the tread grooves following the road grooves. I beleive you can "tune down" the alignment and take some of this out. But it won't drive responsively as it should for a high perf car.


As far as wear, the PZeros are nearly at 40,000 miles and have reached the wear bars. I bought the car a 20,000 miles and I figure it was driven nicely. I've driven it pretty hard in corners and braking, but with only a handful of hard launches. The front and rear are almost the same wear. I have no complaints about wear from the OEM PZero. But the car has been in Socal its entire life. No cold. Cornering seems pretty much as advertised, about .9G. A bit less as the tires age and dry. I think the Pzero is a solid performing tire in summer use as it is intended, especially if you consider the price in the stock sizes.

TireRack has testing on the PZero vs other Max Perf Summer tires. There are better cornering tires, but you pay for them. There are better straight line traction tires for less. Pzero seems to be decent all around for the $. I wouldn't keep them on a car that saw cold temps, even when parked. Same with any Summer category tire.