The excellent, but ageing ultra high performance Pirelli P Zero has finally been replaced, and is now called the… Pirelli P Zero!
Launched in 2007, the P Zero has gone through a number of lifecycle updates, but the tread has always remained the distinctive P Zero pattern.
Not wanting to make things simple, the new P Zero has been launched in not one, but two new tread patterns, one designed for luxury saloons, and one for sports cars. As you would expect, the sports car version of the tire targets prestigious OE manufacturers such as Ferrari, McLaren, Lamborghini and BMW //M division, and the luxury saloon version regular high end marques, such as Audi and BMW.
The sports car version of the tire has larger tread blocks on the outer shoulder to offer improved dry handling and lateral stability, while the outer shoulder of the luxury saloon version is designed in a way to improve comfort, reduce noise and offer better lateral aquaplaning resistance.
Only the sports car version of the P Zero will be available to buy without any OE mark, the luxury saloon version of the tire will all be vehicle specific.
The new P Zero improves the outgoing tire in several key areas. The old P Zero was already an excellent maximum performance road tire which gave excellent handling and grip,but sometimes wasn't the most comfortable, economical, or best wearing tire in its class.
The new P Zero specifically targets noise, rolling resistance, weight and wet braking improvements to ensure performance and driving pleasure is improved in all areas.
With the new P Zero, Pirelli are investing a lot of time customising the tire for different OE requirements, to ensure the new P Zero performs flawlessly on every OE fitment they have. At launch, the new P Zero has over 60 homologations with Pirelli looking to increase the number quickly over the next year.
The P Zero Improvements
The new P Zero has several new technologies. New underlayer compounds are designed to improve handling and rolling resistance, innovative polymers with "advanced mechanical properties" help with wet and dry grip, and the new tread pattern has deeper longitudinal grooves to help improve aquaplaning resistance.
To improve driving feel and enjoyment, Pirelli have included F1 bead technology derived from lessons learnt in Formula 1. This is a particularly rigid compound the bead area that allows the tire to transmit steering forces more directly to the road, offering improved steering response and feel.
The new tire also boasts an 80% silica compound, which helps with wet grip, wear, and lowers the rolling resistance by of the new P Zero by 15%
Testing the new P Zero
To launch the P Zero to the UK, Pirelli invited TireReviews to Silverstone to try the new product on a range of fast Audis.
On the day we had the opportunity to test the new P Zero on the Audi RS3, TTS and R8 V10+.
On each car, the new P Zero performed flawlessly, offering excellent grip, a good balance, communicative steering, and when pushed past the limit, a controllable progressive slide, without the tire overheating.
The new P Zero might have the same name as the outgoing tire, but it has been improved in almost every way. We'll be very interested to see how the new tire performs in magazine group tests, as it should be able to give the likes of Continental, Goodyear and Michelin a real push for the top spot.
Hi there, I stumbled upon the tirerack preview article where they say
"Non-Original equipment tires also will be a part of the lineup. Standard replacement tires will feature a single, high silica content compound across the face of the tire, with Run Flat tires utilizing the Luxury Saloon tread design and non-Run Flat tires featuring the Sports Car pattern."
if this is true, the Non-OE tires are definitely more comparable to PS4, F1A5, and CPC6 than their bigger brothers. The former tires also feature a single compound tread and are biased towards comfort. Could it be that only OE PZ4 (SC variant) sports the dual-compound tread? is this something you would know from your experience with Pirelli? According to Tirerack there exist two different outer shoulder compounds, a street based performance compound, and a motorsport inspired one capable of handling more extreme temperatures. If this were true there would be a total of 3 different tread compounds on the same tire variant, before even looking at the construction.
Tirerack goes on to suggest non-OE PZ4 are available with PNCS, which would results in both tread geometries being available in the aftermarket, which is also disputed.
I know this gets technical very quickly, it seems to be a trend with Pirelli. However I think it is interesting as OEM Pirellis are not well represented in tests featuring Non-OE tires. Pirelli is not doing themselves any good favouring the OE market and lacking consistency across their product range.
Best,
T
Thank you for taking the time to comment, very interesting points. I've been meaning to have a catchup with Pirelli, I'll try and get this answered.
Thank you for taking the time to get to the bottom of these technical questions and to reply to all the messages you receive. This is easily the best tire review website. Keep up the love for tires! :D I will stay tuned
Have these PZ4's OEM tires fitted on 09/16 Audi Q3 Quattro S Line Plus. (255 40 19) Seriously impressed, excellent high speed handling and roadholding both wet and dry, with little road noise. Running Asy 2's on previous SUV, these are better in all respects.
Ordered a set of Pzeroes and it had PZ4 printed on it. Could it be Pirelli trying to name their latest offering? Would correspond with some info found on the internet.
Assuming they have the new tread pattern, then it could be! The internet seems to have agreed on PZ4 but we've heard nothing official from Pirelli on this!
P Zero vs SportContact 6 vs Pilot Sport 4 vs Asymmetric 3?
We're working on it (but Pilot Super Sport rather than PS4)
Did Michelin launch the new PSS already?? I thought for now the PS4 was replacing the PSS...
We're looking at the larger sizes, where the PSS is still the tire.
We would expect the PSS to be replaced late this year or next year
Hmmm... in that case I'd include the old PSS but would also keep the PS4 in that group, considering it's the newest UHP tire from Michelin. Besides, we could actually see how different the old PSS is from the new PS4. Please do it, guys!
Sadly the only 19" size the PS4 is made in currently is 255/35 R19, and our test vehicle uses larger sizes.
We'll see what data we can get out of Michelin for the PSS / PS4 comparison!
That's unfortunate, that would be a comparison everyone who's into UHP tires would like to see... Thanks anyway guys, I really appreciate your work.
to bad, the PSS isn´t available in my size and some other sizes disappear because of PS4.
PS4 isn´t tested yet, the new Yokohama Advan Fleva also not :\
Nice. I'd also like to see how the new P Zero Corsa performs. It may be a more direct competitor to the PSS.
We believe the Corsa to sit somewhere between the MPSS and the Pilot Sport Cup 2. It will be interesting to see if any of the German magazines put it to the test!
So you reckon the normal P Zero is closer to the PSS? Interesting.
We would expect the P Zero Sports Car and P Zero Corsa to sit either side of the PSS in performance, but this needs to be confirmed by testing!
vs RT2....
Serious testers publish the tire test results always with DOT number of tested tires. Some of them even with the Treadwear number or equivalent index.
All magazine tests have photos of the tire tested, and as you say the serious one publish DOT and IPC/EAN numbers. User reviews is where things will get more confusing, we're working on a solution to archive all the current reviews to the old tread pattern then starting fresh with the new P Zero.
Good one, but I think the same name will mess up the reviews, as the reviews of the new one will be mixed with the reviews of the old one... There's got to be a way around this problem...
I know exactly what you mean, it happens all the time.
However the pzero has been the name given to pirelli's highest performance tire for 3 decades, so why change that now!
We have discussed this at length with Pirelli, however there doesn't seem to be a good way around the problem!