Brake Turn Accelerate: Nitto NT05 tire review

Since I average over 700 track miles a year on this car in addition to the usual 8,000 miles a year of regular street driving, I use a lot of tires. I get a little bit of “tire tester” perspective, so I thought I’d share my observations on the recently introduced Nitto NT05.
http://www.nittotire.com/#index.tire.nt05

The headline is, from a track performance standpoint, they feel like they slot right in between the high performance street tire Dunlop Direzza Star Spec, and the track-only R-compound Nitto NT01. The NT05 is a terrific tire that only asks for slight compromises in streetability in exchange for outstanding track performance, and they’re a bargain for the performance they offer. There may be streetable tires that perform slightly better on track, but they’re going to cost an awful lot more.

The Details:

I’m running the NT05 in the 255/40-17 size on factory style17x8 Cobra wheels. The NT05 doesn’t come in a 245-width 17, but the 255/40’s fit the 8-inch wheel width very nicely, not oversized at all. It seems Nittos tend to run a little narrow for any given size, and these appear to be no exception. In my opinion, they fit perfectly on the wheels I have.

My past street tire experience on this car involves several sets of Kumho MX, Bridgestone RE-01R, and Dunlop Direzza D1 Star Spec. They were all fairly equal from a road course track-times standpoint, but they were all behaved very differently from one another. Specifically:

Kumho MX: An impressive performer for the money, but screams and howls so much at the limits that it’s actually embarrassing. It gets old explaining that no, they are not being overdriven, yes they do sound that bad when they’re driven properly. Driven at their limits, they sound like an impending wreck at all times. Trackside onlookers will stop their conversations and look up to see who’s about to crash. They feel mushy, which takes some getting used to, and they’re nearly worthless in the rain.

Bridgestone RE-01R: Much quieter than the Kumho MX at the limit and overall, feel much nicer and faster, but the times don’t bear it out, at least for me. Virtually equal to the MX from an outright performance standpoint, but a nicer tire to drive.

Dunlop Direzza Star Spec: Stunning in the rain, subdued noises at the limit, very predictable, very nice tire overall, but wear [i]very[/i] quickly 5000 miles and they were gone, and only about 500 of it was on the track.

Now, on to the NT05.

Quantifiable Performance

The NT05 appears to be notably faster on track all of the others listed. The only direct video comparisons I have of the same configuration shows I was 2-3 seconds faster per lap on Heartland Park’s 1.8-mile Short Configuration than I was with the Dunlops, and probably 1 second of that can be attributed to a rear swaybar change I made to the car in the meantime. Dunlop times were about 1:24 and NT05 times were 1:21ish.

On the 2.1-mile Club Configuration, I was just barely faster with the NT05’s than I was with a combination of Kumho MX and RE-01R, at about 1:40 per lap, but the catch is, when I ran the Nitto’s, I was also battling a ridiculous 30-40 mph headwind on the main straight. Given the barn-door aerodynamics of the 1992 mustang coupe, this makes a noticeable difference. It was like somebody pulling the parking brake once I hit about 90 mph. So while I can’t quantify the performance improvement back to back, I am confident saying the NT05 is a better-performing car on a road course than any of the other ones I’ve listed.

Subjective Performance

Subjectively, the NT05’s behave like a true “summer tire”, providing amazing dry grip, yet surprisingly grippy in the rain, at least on the street. I haven’t this car enough wet tracks to be able to make a comparison, but sticking with the street, the MX and the RE01R can’t even compare to the NT05 for wet performance. Not even close. The Direzza is the only tire that came close to the NT05’s wet performance, and the only place it might actually be better is in standing water, thanks to its deeper tread voids than the NT05’s. If the pavement is simply damp, the NT05 sticks very well.

Ride quality is firm, no doubt about it. By my recollection, the MX’s were worse once they wore down to similar tread depths, but the RE01R and Direzza were a little smoother.

The NT05’s tread comes fairly shallow, but with large tread blocks and an apparently fairly stiff sidewall. Both of these serve to minimize tread squirm and resultant overheating. They don’t appear to get greasy with extended use, and at the same time, they don’t take a lot of heating to come into their own. That’s a pretty amazing feat in my book.

Turn-in is sharp, and breakaway is very predictable. The tires talk and sing at the limits, without being obnoxious about it like the MX, and when they’re about to cross the threshold of grip, they give you an audible warning so you can get it back in line with a quick, easy correction. 1:34 in the Shelby video below and 2:02 in the Subaru video is a good example of what I mean.

It’s too early for me to give a valid mileage estimate, and I haven’t taken tread depth measurements, but on visual inspection after a few track events, and a couple thousand road miles, I am very impressed with the wear rate.

One odd thing about these tires is, they have developed a buzzing noise at speed. You can hear it in some of the videos, and it has caused more than one passenger in my car to ask “why does your car sound like an airplane?” I’ve talked to other NT05 owners who say they’re not familiar with this phenomenon, so I’m not sure it’s inherent to the model of tire, and may instead be attributed to the specific track conditions I’ve used them under.

Thanks to the symmetrical tread pattern Nitto baked into the NT05, I have the flexibility to dismount the tires and switch them side to side on the car. This is a feature I really appreciate, because it allows me to extend the life of the tires. Heartland Park punishes the outside edge of the right-side tires, and if I couldn’t swap them side to side, I’d wear out the right side long before the left.

Videos

Here’s some in-car videos to give you an idea of how the NT05 behaves:

With a Shelby GT500: