Those of you who have purchased a C7 Stingray or Z06 are well aware that Michelin is the tire selected to keep your Vette well stuck to road, and provide miles of reliable use. The C7 Stingray comes equipped with the Michelin Pilot Super Sport tire. We have already found this to be an exceptional tire, both in design and longevity considering the amount of grip they offer, as well as their performance in the wet.

Michelin is also the tire supplier for the C7 Z06. “Michelin’s tire development is a great example of the technology transfer between track and street,” said Tadge Juechter, Corvette Chief Engineer. “Leveraging some of the same engineering resources and technologies used by Corvette Racing, Michelin developed a production tire for the Corvette Z06 with unprecedented amounts of grip–and helped make the Z06 one of the most capable performance cars on the market.”

The C7 Z06 generates 650 hp and 650 lb-ft of torque thanks to the supercharged LT4. The Corvette Z06 upgraded with the Z07 option includes specifically developed and tuned MICHELIN Pilot Sport Cup 2 ZP tires, which aid in achieving the ferocious performance statistics that it currently maintains. To refresh your memories, a Z06 that combines the Z0y package with the eight-speed paddle-shifted automatic, can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 2.95 seconds, brakes from 60 to 0 mph in just 99.6 feet, and run the quarter-mile in 11.2 seconds at 127 mph.

“It wasn’t that long ago that achieving 1.0 lateral Gs was a big deal,” said Lee Willard, Michelin tire designer and lead engineer assigned to the Corvette Racing team.  “Now, with the latest MICHELIN Sport Cup 2 tires on the new Corvette Z06 with Z07 package we can attain 1.2 lateral Gs on tires that will last far longer than the competition tire.” For those unfamiliar with what that feels like, well it’s rather hard to explain, but it certainly brings new meaning to the phrase, “corning like it’s on rails.”

“We incorporated many innovations in the MICHELIN Pilot Sport tires for the 2014 Stingray and the Z51 performance package last year, so it was an exciting challenge to build on those gains for the Z06 by working together with the Corvette engineering team,” Willard said.

According to Michelin, both the Pilot Super Sport and Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires reached key improvements including extraordinary gains in traction, improved tread life, lower-rolling resistance to improve fuel economy and handling improvements that make the car more enjoyable and drivable. When Corvette Online attended the street and track event hosted by Chevrolet to experience the Z06, we were blown away by the grip of a “factory tire.”

It wasn’t long ago that grip like this would only be found on purpose-built race cars, and it even so, it wouldn’t last for long. These tires enable the car a level of grip equal to or greater to the technology found in the car itself and allow you to do so for prolonged periods of time. So get out there, whether it’s an autocross, open track day, or some canyon carving on an early Sunday morning, these tires will not disappoint.