The new Dunlop Direzza Sport Z1 tyre is winning support amongst car enthusiasts.

The DUNLOP Direzza Sport Z1 has all the good manners of a high performance street tyre; low noise, good tread life, good wet performance, but its very high dry grip makes it particularly suitable for track use where specific race tyres are not permitted.

At left is Robin Baily's new Nissan 370Z, recently fitted with the new Dunlops.

Robin's immediate reaction after driving through a Melbourne rainstorm was: "Heaps more grip in the wet". Since then he has had a chance to run them on the track at Sandown International raceway. Following is his report:

The Z1 is around 2 seconds per lap quicker that the tyre it replaced which is mega for a supposedly non R-Spec tyre , although durability I don't expect to compare quite as well as its predecessor.  That said, I have so far put around a dozen 12 - 15 minute " track-day sessions " onto these tyres and nearly 4000 road klms and they are holding up well.  I ' ll do a tread depth measurement over the weekend and let you know what the readings are, for interests sake. The grin-factor with these tyres is " huge " as I can go inside the 100 metre marker at the top of the Sandown back straight and not take any risks with getting thru the turn, and not quite as deep into T1 without any risk of running out of room on corner exit.  In both cases, the car is travelling comfortably over 200kph, and braking grip with both Ferodo DS2500 and Endless 462TR pads has been impressive.

The Direzza is what I'd call the holy grail of ultra-premium road tyres . . An excellent (and fairly cost-effective) compromise of reasonable wear when used in " daily-driver " mode, but well capable of excellent performance as a track-day tyre.  Clearly, they are not the same as an all-out R-Spec competition tyre, but they come comfortably close to R-Spec capability. Top product !!!!!