Welcome to the start of our 2019 Continental Black Chili Driving Experience. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be following 12 teams of Autocar readers on the ultimate road trip in the south of France.
They’ll be driving a stunning range of sportscars and hot hatches on some of Europe’s most beautiful and challenging roads – all in a quest to test and find out more about Continental’s latest high-performance Black Chili tyres.
But what is a Black Chili tyre? We caught up with Continental Tyres Marketing Communications Manager Peter Robb to find out more.
To find out more, head to continental-tyres.co.uk/car/
If that has you intrigued, be sure to check back on Autocar.co.uk on Monday 1st July.
We’ll be following every step of the Black Chili Driving Experience with a live blog and daily videos. It’s a chance to see behind the scenes of a stunning tyre test as we tell you all about the amazing roads and the cars we’ll be driving, as well as explaining more about the technology that underpins Continental’s Black Chili tyres.
Understanding the Black Chili tech
So, what is a Black Chili tyre? As Continental’s Peter Robb explains, Black Chili is a special compound, developed to offer the ultimate levels of performance.
A road tyre’s contact patch – the area in contact with the asphalt – can be as small as a smartphone. That means tyre manufacturers are hunting for every fraction of grip, especially on the high-performance tyres used on hot hatches and sportscars.
Black Chili technology was developed in the world of bicycle racing, where the contact patches of thin cycle tyres are even smaller. It gets its name from the refined version of Black Carbon used in the compound, as well as the way that chili embeds and sticks itself into the pores of your tongues.
In fact, that’s exactly how Black Chili works. Its micro-flexible compound helps the tyre surface flex to fit tiny undulations in the road surface, while microscopic atomic bonds grip on like tiny suction pads – just like on a gecko’s feet – for maximum adhesion. Short-chain polymers within the compound also absorb the high-frequency vibrations that run through the tyre during braking, improving stopping distance performance.
The benefits of Continental’s Black Chili compound even extend to fuel efficiency. Long-chain polymers deep within the tyre’s structure absorb the low-frequency vibrations caused by a tyre rotating at high-speed, helping it to ‘run’ more easily, reducing its rolling resistance and improving fuel economy.
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