{"id":7251,"date":"2026-09-07T14:16:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T14:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetirelab.com\/mag\/?p=7251"},"modified":"2026-09-07T14:16:54","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T14:16:54","slug":"auto-express-winter-tyre-test-2026-continental-narrowly-beats-pirelli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/auto-express-winter-tyre-test-2026-continental-narrowly-beats-pirelli\/","title":{"rendered":"Auto Express winter tyre test 2026: Continental narrowly beats Pirelli"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Auto Express tested 11 winter tyres in 205\/55 R16. Continental WinterContact TS 870 wins with 100%, followed by Pirelli Cinturato Winter 3 (99.8%) and Hankook W462 Winter i*cept RS3 (99.4%). Bridgestone and Michelin share fourth place.<\/p>\n<p>Continental leads wet braking but ranks ninth in snow traction. Hankook wins snow braking, Goodyear wins snow handling, and Michelin has the lowest rolling resistance. Minerva finishes last overall despite sharing the best dry-handling score.<\/p>\n<p>Snow testing took place in Ivalo, Finland; wet and dry testing at the Contidrom in Germany. Wet performance contributes 50% of the overall score, snow and dry performance 20% each, and the remaining tests 10%. Category scores are percentages relative to the category winner, not braking distances.<\/p>\n<h2>Overall results<\/h2>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Position<\/th>\n<th>Tyre<\/th>\n<th>Score<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>1<\/td>\n<td>Continental WinterContact TS 870<\/td>\n<td>100.0%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>2<\/td>\n<td>Pirelli Cinturato Winter 3<\/td>\n<td>99.8%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>3<\/td>\n<td>Hankook W462 Winter i*cept RS3<\/td>\n<td>99.4%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>4<\/td>\n<td>Bridgestone Blizzak 6<\/td>\n<td>99.3%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>4<\/td>\n<td>Michelin ALPIN 7<\/td>\n<td>99.3%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>6<\/td>\n<td>GoodYear UltraGrip Performance 3<\/td>\n<td>98.9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>7<\/td>\n<td>Falken EuroWinter HS02<\/td>\n<td>98.6%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>8<\/td>\n<td>Dunlop Winter<\/td>\n<td>97.3%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>9<\/td>\n<td>Linglong Sport Master Winter<\/td>\n<td>96.7%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>10<\/td>\n<td>Maxxis Premitra Snow WP6<\/td>\n<td>96.6%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>11<\/td>\n<td>Minerva Frostrack HP<\/td>\n<td>93.0%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.autoexpress.co.uk\/product-group-tests\/93097\/best-winter-tyres-2026\">Auto Express, 2.9.2026<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.autoexpress.co.uk\/product-group-tests\/93097\/best-winter-tyres\/results\">Auto Express \u2014 Overall results<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Auto Express tested 11 winter tyres in 205\/55 R16. Continental WinterContact TS 870 wins with 100%, followed by Pirelli Cinturato Winter 3 (99.8%) and Hankook W462 Winter i*cept RS3 (99.4%). Bridgestone and Michelin share fourth place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7273,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7251\/revisions\/7273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetirelab.com\/mag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}