Bridgestone Tire's Drive and Learn event has been going on for several years. It's a program primarily for its dealers and distributors. The main purpose to inform
them of new products, current and future promotions along with advertising campaigns, and even some technical presentations.

The best part, though, is the driving. Bridgestone assembles a group of instructors with real racing backgrounds (SCCA, Formula Atlantic, Touring Car,
Formula Mazda, karts, etc.) to coach those in attending around an autocross (i.e., parking lot) circuit. You're supposed to evaluate their tires too, but
most participants are too focussed on going quickly with the least amount of cone killing.

We attended a recent Drive and Learn event at Dodger Stadium. The day started with a background and marketing presentation, which included a reminder of
Bridgestone's dominance of the top echelons of motorsport: Bridgestone is the sole tire supplier for Formula 1 and MotoGP.
Later, we
had a technical presentation that included an explanation of rolling resistance and its influence on fuel economy.

There was also an intro to the four tires we would try that day: the Insignia SE200, Potenza G019 Grid, Potenza RE960AS Pole Position, and Potenza RE760
Sport.

The SE200 is mass-market touring tire, while the G019 is an entry-level performance tire, for cars such as VW GTI and other import tuner cars. The RE960AS
is all-season tire targeted for sport sedans, and the RE760 is an ultra-performance tire targeted for Benz AMG and BMW M-series vehicles.

These four tires are not fitted as original equipment on any vehicle. It was evenhandedly cushy to evaluate the driving differences in the four tires, as they were
designed with evenhandedly different performance emphasis.

Sometimes, it's difficult to discern differences between one tire and its direct competitor from another brand. But that was no problem here: there were no
comparison tires from other brands for us to sample.

On to the driving!

The instructors first took us around the parking lot course for one lap to show us the line. Our instructor then place in a hot lap to show the limit capabilities of the many gray BMW 328s that we had at our disposal. He demonstrated brutal braking and amazing cornering speed for such a tight, technical course.

How'd I do? "Trail the brake more into the medium and slow corners to settle the chassis," my instructor told me. And yeah, it was fun out there.

Here are a couple of videos, outside and inside the car. (That's not me on the in-car video: no wheel shuffle!)

Later this week I'll talk about Bridgestone's new ultra-high performance track-oriented tire, the RE11.

 
Albert Austria, Senior Vehicle Evaluation Engineer, Edmunds, Inc.