Your tyres are the only contact and grip between your vehicle and the road. They should provide a comfortable ride, and yet be as robust and hardwearing as possible, allowing you to maintain safe and controlled manoeuvrability for your vehicle.
To make this happen, tyres are carefully constructed from a combination of different ingredients. It pretty serious stuff, for up to 200 separate raw materials can be used in the construction of just one tyre.
Your tyre tread, is the grooved outer layer that is in direct contact with the road. This rubber compound is specifically designed to grip the road, resist general wear and tear and cope with the high temperatures generated by friction.
The grooves and tread sipes on the shoulder of the tyre, are specifically designed to channel water away from the surface of the tyre, to maintain maximum grip in the wet.
It makes sense then that tyres are made of different rubber compounds to suit different vehicles and driving conditions. For example racing cars have tyres that generate a lot of heat, require optimum grip and are required to work at very high temperature ranges to enable prolonged usage at high speeds on the track. These tyres wear more swiftly than typical road tyres, which are balanced to provide optimum steering, braking, road holding and wear capabilities.