Continental meets UHP challenges

Quicker, bigger, wider – and more and more of it. The significance of the ultra-high-performance segment, known as UHP for short, has continuously risen over the past few years. Continental experts value the market quantity for 17-inch + tyres fitted with a W, Y, or Z speed index at well in excess of 5,000,000 units for the current year in Germany alone.

And demand will rise further. Vehicles fitted as standard with engines for speeds in excess of 240 km/h are part and parcel of everyday life on the roads now. The high-speed limit is being pushed further and further upwards. If 300 km/h was a kind of sound barrier in vehicle mass production only a few years ago, the R8 from Audi can now reach peak speeds in excess of 300 km/h, as can the Porsche 911 Turbo S. Further fast cars from Ferrari, Bugatti, and Jaguar, among others, achieve speeds well above this level.

This trend can also be observed in the SUV market segment, a market segment that continues to grow. Four-wheel drives such as the Range Rover HSE, Audi Q7, Mercedes GLK, and VW Touareg can easily reach speeds well above 200 km/h. The latter reaches peak speeds of 242 km/h. BMW X5 M and Porsche Cayenne Turbo S can even accelerate as far as 275 km/h and 283 km/h respectively with horsepower well above 500

Challenging task for specialists

Compared to narrower tyres, modern wide tyres generally offer advantages in terms of cornering stability, steering precision, lane changing, load changing, and agility. However, in light of the increasingly sporty character of fast cars, conventional tyres are finding it more and more difficult to meet the industry’s requirements in the high-end range.

In keeping with this, the development of ultra-high-performance tyres in recent years has increasingly become a highly challenging task for specialists. Super sports cars that can reach speeds in excess of 300 km/h as soon as they leave the plant require increasingly special solutions.

At the same time, factors such as fuel consumption and safety are playing an ever larger role in the performance specifications of automotive manufacturers. Continental, as one of the leading OEMs in Europe, responded to this trend by incorporating the ContiSportContact 5 and ContiSportContact 5 P models into product development at an early stage.

With the ContiSportContact 5, Continental is appealing in particular to the drivers of sports cars and SUVs with sporty driving properties. The sports tire with innovative black chili technology is approved for speeds up to 300 km/h.

Its big brother, the ContiSportContact 5 P goes one step further; it is installed, as a piece of original equipment, in the Audi R8 super sports car, a vehicle that can reach speeds of up to 320 km/h with horsepower of up to 560. The letter “P” here stands for “performance”, indicating an uncompromisingly sporty design. This is the first time that the designs of a tyre model for the front and rear axle have been perfectly coordinated with each other and adapted for assembly on the individual axles.