Michelin’s New Tyres Give You No Reason To Avoid The Wet In Your GT3 RS

Look, we know what it’s like to own a Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Actually, we don’t, but we can imagine. You wake up, ready to explore the upper reaches of your glorious naturally-aspirated 4.0-litre flat-six, only to find that it’s a bit cold and damp outside, so you decide against it out of fear of ending up on the front page of a local paper.

Well, happily, there’s a solution, because Porsche and Michelin have developed a bespoke cold- and wet-weather tyre for the GT3 RS specifically designed to give you no excuse not to use it as much as possible.

The new rubber is part of Michelin’s Pilot Sport S 5 range and is being exclusively sold by Porsche tuner extraordinaire Manthey Racing. It features a new compound and tread pattern, and the central grooves are now 7.4mm deep – all specifically designed to reduce aquaplaning.

The changes go deeper than that, though – there’s a greater proportion of silica in the rubber, which apparently helps with grip in the wet and getting the tyres up to operating temperature quicker. The more you know.

And don’t worry – if you live somewhere where it can suddenly go from single-digit temperatures and sluicing rain to warm sunshine, the tyres are still designed to work well in the warm. The rubber’s effects in rubbish weather are best demonstrated, though, by the lap times it helped a GT3 RS deliver around a wet 1.7-mile circuit at Michelin’s test centre – over 10 seconds faster than the car’s regular rubber.

"We are responding to demand from our particularly performance-focused customers that have expressed a desire to spend more time on track during spring and autumn,” said Porsche GT department boss Andreas Preuninger. “The new tyres significantly increase the annual usage period of the GT3 RS."

So, there you have it – now you’ve got no excuse not to take your GT3 RS out in the wet. How about a set of snow tyres next, Michelin?