• Top performance in handling, grip, and safety
  

• Innovative tread pattern and revolutionary materials
  

• For super sports cars and custom-tuned models up to 350 km/h

According to a popular German saying, winning once is chance, winning twice is luck, but from the third time on it's down to skill. That being the case, the brand new SportContact6 serves up spectacular and enduring proof of the specialist skills of Continental’s development engineers in the super sports tire segment. The new flagship among the Corporation’s car tires exhibits impressive performance and maximum safety at speeds of up to 350 km/h. Never before has there been a tire that was sportier on the road. In this particular segment the performance gap to the predecessor model has never been greater. And never has a follow-on model been so comprehensively redeveloped as this time around.

Top performance in handling, grip, and safety

There's no question about it: with the significant performance gains over the ContiSportContact 5 P predecessor model which itself won top marks in numerous tire tests, the new SportContact 6 is now the one to beat in the prestigious super sports tire segment. Steering precision has been increased by 14 percent over the predecessor model. Handling performance in the dry is eleven percent up. The grip level on race tracks has been improved by four percent. And when it comes to wet-weather properties, overall the new SportContact 6 has a two percent edge over even its predecessor's high performance. On top of which, mileage and comfort each rack up a seven percent improvement in performance characteristics.

There are 41 sizes available for 19 to 23 inch rims. This means that the SportContact 6 fits mainly high-end performance sports cars like the Audi R8 or the Porsche 911, cars with very sporty set-ups like the BMW 5 Series or Mercedes AMG models, and the electrically powered Tesla S with up to 416 hp. The new tire got off to a flying start even before its official launch, as Honda approved it for the new Civic Type R and set a new lap record with the car on the Nordschleife at the Nürburgring.

Innovative tread pattern and revolutionary materials

To put this tire’s vastly superior performance compared to its predecessor onto the road, Continental’s technical wizards have virtually reinvented the chemical composition of the tread strip, as well as the tread pattern and the tire construction. Developing an innovative high-grip version of the Black Chili compound had a significant impact. The Black Chili technology with special grip resins patented by Continental already provided the ContiSportContact 5 P with optimum microflexibility and exceptional grip in the dry. In the new SportContact 6, the rubber compound is also fine-tuned to mesh with the structure of the road surface. At the same time, fleeting atomic bonds in the contact patch act like nanoscopic suction pads to ensure high adhesion. Together, these two factors ensure maximum grip in all directions when braking, cornering, and accelerating on both wet and dry roads.

Another innovation is the new tire’s force-vectoring technology for optimum force transmission. This involves using different tread elements on the inside and outside of the tire and also in the center. Depending on the tire size, three or four central ribs and the tire's inner shoulder are responsible for maximum transmission of the lateral forces which also leads to a perceptible improvement in the direct translation of steering commands to the road. As the forces acting on the tire during cornering are greater on the outside than on the inside, the innovative rib edge design is also asymmetrical. This makes for greater rib stability and enables higher forces to be transferred. When creating the outer shoulder, the tire designers interlinked the various block elements into a larger macro block unit. Large tread blocks on the outside are connected to interlinked elements in a second row of blocks. This way the tread blocks provide mutual support during fast cornering and can transfer the high lateral forces with ease.

The third significant development step is the use of a new reinforcing material by the name of Aralon 350 which has been specially designed for the SportContact 6. This synthetic textile fiber, in which two yarns of high-strength aramid are twisted together with a yarn of flexible nylon, is embedded in the rubber. Located beneath the tread, this endless cap ply acts like an additional steel belt, providing extra stabilization to help deal with the enormous centrifugal forces that act on the tire at very high speeds.

The sports tire family from Continental

With the new SportContact 6, innovation and technology leader Continental is again raising the bar in the tuning segment for all tuning-savvy drivers who will not settle for anything less than the very best in premium tires. The product range, which includes not only the SportContact 6 but also the ContiForceContact and the ContiSportContact 5, underlines Continental’s distinctive market position in the sports tires segment.

In the ContiSportContact 5, Continental has a tire in its portfolio that is equally well suited to sporty cars and SUVs with sporty handling characteristics. This impressive tire with approvals for speeds of up to 300 km/h, delivers short braking distances and low rolling resistance, accompanied by very high grip and extreme safety when cornering. The key to this performance is a compound designed for maximum force transmission under braking and low rolling resistance during normal driving.

The ContiForceContact is a thoroughbred sports event tire for the road and race track which Continental developed in close collaboration with top tuners AC Schnitzer and TechArt, as well as experts from the specialist sports car magazine sportauto. The result is an ultra-high-performance product for racing driver courses and advanced driver training sessions on the Nordschleife at the Nürburgring. Among its special features are the ultimate in grip and optimum steering precision when driving at the limit. 

Demand for ultra-high-performance tires will continue to rise

All three of these sports tires are located in the ultra-high-performance or UHP segment which has enjoyed soaring demand in recent years. And at Continental that trend is expected to continue. By 2020 the tire manufacturer is expecting annual growth rates of around five percent for 17 to 18 inch rims, which will take numbers up to more than 37 million units. According to the forecasts, the growth in demand will be even higher for 19 to 23 inch rims, with an annual average of nine percent predicted. This would mean 7.5 million tires in 2020. Within this size category, the bigger the rims, the higher the growth. Annual growth for 19 inch rims is forecast to reach around eight percent, while for 20 inch rims ten percent growth is expected. For 21 inch rims and above, the experts are anticipating an annual increase of 14 percent, meaning that demand in this segment would have almost doubled by 2020.