Goodyear Eagle F1s - grip, grip and fast tyre wear. (Goodyear)

Member Name: valve90210

Product:	Goodyear
Date:	26/02/09 (143 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great grip in wet and dry

Disadvantages: Wear out really rather quickly...I guess that's the price you pay for the good grip

When it comes to tyres I think I must be one of the unluckiest people ever, for my current car, a Mark 4 Vauxhall Astra SRi, I have had to purchase approximately 12 tyres in the space of 5 years. I have had tyres slashed, worn out and so many punctures I have now lost count. It really is unusual and very annoying especially when I've had to buy new ones constantly and with each tyre costing between £60 - £80 due to Vauxhall using what seems to be a fairly uncommon size, it has cost me a fortune.

I don't mind too much when the tyres need replacing due to being worn out, but when you have to replace a tyre which is only 5 weeks old and has done no more than 1500miles, due to picking up a puncture in the side wall which can't be repaired, it gets me rather annoyed!!!

About this time last year, my MOT was due, I'd been keeping an eye on my front tyres and knew that they were getting close to the limit, and in fact were performing pretty badly, slipping if I needed to pull away quickly and if I needed to stop quickly, and just generally feeling not brilliant. Upon inspection I decided that I needed to replace them.

I opted for a pair of Goodyear Eagle F1s as I had heard that they were great for grip in both the wet and the dry, and at a price of £70 each ordered online they were not a great deal more than I would be paying per tyre for some rubbish none brand tyres from my local fitting stations.

When they arrived, I was very impressed, they looked to be good quality tyres, no moulding errors or anything such like. Good deep tread which should keep them legal and working well for quite some time.

I got them fitted and straight away noticed a vast improvement over the only just legal tyres I had been running around on for the past few weeks.

Even from the very first journey the F1s had plenty of grip, quite a surprise as new tyres often feel rubbish to begin with as they are coated in a fine layer of a chemical which allows them to be removed from the moulds easily. As this layer wears away, the tyres bed in and the grip improves. With impressive grip right from the off, I was quite excited to feel what they would be like after a few hundred miles when they were giving their full grip!

Pulling away quickly with the new tyres was great, offering plenty of grip and not even the slightest amount of slip or spin even on damp roads. Once driving the tyres provided pretty good feedback through the steering,though this is limited by the steering on the Astra, which at times does feel a little like the steering wheel is not connected to anything - not the best steering I've ever felt!!

The F1s gave pretty good ride comfort too, small lumps and bumps in the road were sailed over without too much fuss or discomfort due to the fairly soft side walls. However these same side walls meant that cornering at times was prone to feeling a little soft. This would probably not be the case with lower profile versions (mine were 205/50 R16s). Despite the slightly soft feel of hard cornering, there was still plenty of grip to be had.

Having in the past had some Pirelli tyres on the front which were terrible in the wet, offering very little grip indeed even in just damp conditions, the Eagle F1s were somewhat amazing. Even in the wet they gripped well and kept the wheels from lsipping or spinning on pull away and the handling was great.

Road noise from the tyres was also kept to fairly low levels, though it did rather depend on the surface as some of the terrible surfaces where I live are super noisy at the best of times and the Eagles did little to stop that.

Onto the downsides....

The first downside of these tyres was their performance in snow. Now I know we don't get a great deal of snow in this country, but on the few occassions I had to drive in the snow with these tyres, I found they did not perform very well. As I drive in snow so infrequently, it's hard to make a comparison to the performance of other tyres really but I can say that they had a fairly hard time gripping on any snow which was a bit compacted, and they also found it fairly hard to squish their way through freshly lain snow.

The second, and by far most important downside is the levels of tyre wear!!!

As I mentioned, I purchased this pair of tyres at about this time last year and hence have been in use for just under a year. For the last two or three months I have been noticing that I am getting gradually more slip and spin when pulling away quickly. I initially put it down to wet or greasy roads but having since checked my tyres over, I can see that the problem is actually down to the fact that I am nearing the wear markers on both front tyres already. Now, I have probably done about 12,000 miles in the year so I suppose they have not been too bad, but I will most likely have to replace them before my next MOT at the start of April, which to be totally honest, I'm not too happy about as I was hoping they would last as well as previous tyres I've had on the car have done but this won't be the case.

Overall, I have to say these Tyres have been pretty good and if I had more money, I would probably have them again and be prepared to have to buy them more frequently than other tyres I've used. However as things stand, I am now going to look elsewhere for some tyres that might offer similar levels of performance but will hopefully be longer lasting.

Purely in terms of performance when at their peak, I would give these tyres 4.5 our of 5 as they really are good (unless you often end up driving in the snow). However, as they have not lasted very well despite 95% of my driving being nothing more than your average trundling to and from work, I feel I have to rate them lower as they are not great in terms of value for money.

Summary: A nice tyre but not the best value for money

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