Getting a 9.3 for wet traction is pretty good since nothing even score anything higher then a 8.7 on the comparo...
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/surveyresult....jsp?type=UHPAS
The tire was built on wet traction at there number 1 goal.... look at all the grooves to pump the water out!!
I couldn't find a tire with better water traction available!
And it litterly smoked every tire in all the categories in the comparo!! From dry, wet and even noise!! Amazing!
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The Tire Rack
test results are very useful, because the tests are carried out under controlled conditions by objective professionals with no axe to grind. The Tire Rack
user reviews are completely worthless trash: you have no clue whatsoever who the "reviewers" are, or what they are comparing to, and the 16-year-old who has 15 miles of driving under his belt has a "vote" equal to the 50-year-old with 30 years of autocrossing under his.
A tire built with wet traction as the maker's number one goal is useless on snow, and would not be called an all-season tire. In fact, Bridgestone, with headquarters in Japan, cannot sell the Potenza 960AS in its home market, because all season tires are illegal in Japan (and much of the rest of the world) for safety reasons.
In order for an all season tire to have traction on snow, it must "stick" to the snow, which, under pressure from the tire, is water at the interface between the tread and the snow surface. (The actual mechanism is that the snow sticks to the tread in the first revolution, then on the next revolution the adhered snow on the tread sticks to the snow on the pavement, in the same manner as snow sticks to itself when you roll a snowman.) On wet pavement, water adheres to the tread of an all season tire in the same manner that snow sticks to the tread in snowy conditions. That film of water on the tread acts as a lubricant that interferes with traction (braking) on wet roads.
In contrast, three season tires have tread compounds that shed water from the contact patch between the tread and the pavement rather than retaining it as all season tires do. A famous 1950's commercial showed that it is possible to strike a match on the pavement surface immediately after a (three season) tire has passed over it.
As for the "grooves to pump water out," you must distinguish between driving when it is raining, and driving on wet pavement. All major highways, and most city streets, are crowned (high in the middle, and low on the sides) to drain water on the pavement quickly to the gutters. Grooves in the tread are temporary storage areas for water displaced by the tire on the pavement (and, ideally, moving within the grooves to a place outside of the track). However, when there is no free water to be displaced, no standing water but just a wet surface, the tread design performs no function. If I am driving on a wet road, yes, I
do want a tread pattern to displace the standing water I will occasionally encounter. But if there is too much water on the surface
any tire will hydroplane. There is only so much water
any tire physically can store temporarily in the voids of its tread until it is expelled out the sides.
Put not your faith in tread designs, then; concentrate instead on the chemical composition of the tread compound, whether it adheres to, or sheds, water that it rolls over on the surface of the pavement.