Tips on Driving in the Rain

With the arrival of more rain in the spring, it’s crucial to address how water and humidity affect our roads and, specifically, the performance of motorcycle tires. On days when the weather seems to have a mind of its own, understanding how to deal with these conditions becomes essential to ensure our safety on the road.

To begin, it’s important to mention that if the rain is very heavy, it’s ideal to leave the motorcycle parked. However, there are many days when there’s no choice but to hit the road despite the bad weather. For this reason, we take care to produce tires with maximum grip, thanks to the most advanced technologies. But despite that, how does rain affect tire behavior?

It’s essential to understand the fundamental role that tread grooves has on tires, especially when it comes to their ability to remove water. The negative ratio of the tire tread (negative ratio, see in the diagram) gives us a clear idea of how much effective tread the tire has to face road conditions.

And you might be wondering, what is the negative ratio? To understand this, you have to imagine the footprint of a tire marked on the ground, all the part that is not marked, that is, the tread grooves, is the negative ratio.

The challenge for brands like Continental is to achieve an optimal balance between grip in dry conditions and water extraction capacity in wet conditions, especially in sporty tires. This is achieved, in part, by designing deeper grooves.

Technologies and precautions

Hidroplaning is a major concern in rainy conditions, where water on the road exceeds the tire grooves evacuation capacity, which can cause a loss of traction and control. This effect worsens with higher speeds, which means that, in rainy conditions, choosing the right tires and proper maintenance is more critical than ever.

To address this, Continental has technologies like RainGrip, which is an exclusive compound that provides the tire with more grip on wet or slippery surfaces, also increasing mileage. Models like the ContiRoadAttack 4, the ContiTrailAttack 3 and the TKC 80 among others, include it.

Tire wear also plays a crucial role in safety, especially considering that they tend to wear out faster in the central part of the tread. This uneven wear can be especially dangerous in rainy conditions, where you want to keep the motorcycle as upright as possible in curves to avoid slipping.

To prevent this, Continental has technologies like MultiGrip, GripLimitFeedback, and the BlackChili compound included in many of our tires. However, we want to emphasize that it’s essential for safety to change tires before they reach their wear limit and pay special attention to central tread wear to ensure safe driving in rainy conditions.

Finally, and as always, the best advice is to ride fully alert and ready for anything when the road is wet.

In summary, being prepared for the rain involves more than just equipping the motorcycle with the right tires; it involves understanding how these tires interact with wet conditions and how we can adapt our driving to ensure our safety and that of others on the road.