Does a wider tire actually put more rubber on the road, or is that just something gearheads repeat without checking? Jason Fenske tested 27 different vehicles back-to-back at a real proving ground to find out, running matched braking tests on and off road. The results have real implications for anyone chasing traction at the drag strip, not just SUV shoppers. It’s rare that a tire debate gets settled with actual data instead of opinions.
Ask ten gearheads whether wider tires mean more grip and you’ll get ten confident answers — and at least half of them will be wrong. It’s one of those pieces of car folklore that sounds obviously true until someone actually runs the numbers, which is exactly what Jason Fenske set out to do with an unusual amount of raw material: 27 different vehicles, tested back-to-back on the same stretch of pavement. The results challenge a lot of assumptions that muscle car owners carry straight from the drag strip into everyday driving arguments. Weight, contact patch, and tire compound all turn out to matter in ways that aren’t intuitive at all. For anyone who’s ever debated tire width over a stack of dyno sheets or a pair of drag radials, this is the video that actually settles it.
Twenty-Seven Vehicles, One Braking Test
The methodology here is more rigorous than the typical internet tire debate. Testing took place at NWAPA’s 2017 Mudfest, where Fenske ran a 60-to-0-mph braking test on pavement and a 20-to-0-mph test off-road with every vehicle at the event, logging results with a VBOX Sport data unit rather than eyeballing stopping distances. The lineup spanned an unusually wide range of vehicles for a single test session — from a Lexus GX460 and Nissan Armada down to a Mini Countryman and Subaru Forester, with a Ford Raptor and Jeep Wrangler mixed in for good measure. That range matters, because it means the results aren’t just describing one class of vehicle; they cover nearly every combination of weight, tire width, and drivetrain layout on the market.
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Does Weight Actually Kill Grip?
The intuitive assumption is that heavier vehicles should brake worse, since more mass means more momentum to shed. The physics tell a more complicated story: a heavier vehicle also presses its tires into the pavement harder, which increases the contact patch’s normal force and, within limits, its available grip. That’s part of why a loaded pickup doesn’t necessarily out-brake or under-brake a compact crossover in a straightforward way — weight and grip scale together more than most drivers assume. The real deciding factors end up being tire compound and design, not raw vehicle mass, which is a harder sell at a tailgate argument than it is on a data sheet.
What This Means at the Drag Strip
None of this is only relevant to SUV buyers. The same grip principles apply directly to drag radials and slicks, where muscle car owners spend real money chasing traction off the line. A wider tire without the right compound, pressure, and staging technique won’t out-hook a narrower tire that’s properly prepped, which is exactly the kind of nuance that gets lost in garage debates about tire width. Weight transfer under hard launch, suspension setup, and tire temperature all interact with contact patch in ways that mirror what Fenske documents here on the street side — just at higher stakes and lower elapsed times.
A Channel Built on Answering the Argument
Engineering Explained has built its entire audience around exactly this kind of test: taking an argument that usually gets settled by volume and confidence, and settling it with actual data instead. A new video every Wednesday has turned Jason Fenske into one of the more trusted voices in automotive content specifically because he shows his work. In a hobby where opinion often outruns evidence, that habit of testing the claim instead of repeating it is worth more to enthusiasts than another dyno pull ever could be.
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he is ful of shit
Depends on what you want ! Top fuel tires get tall and skinny
Yes