A large number of spikes is not everything

The race for the number of studs in a tire has been going on for a long time. Test leaders have always been distinguished by a large number of studs. A clever patent for the number of studs, which was registered by the Michelin company, did not allow competitors to even approach their results for a long time, but over time, more and more solutions were found to combat this. The company Nokian in its model Nokian Hakkapeliitta 10p with a smaller number of studs increased their protrusion only for the Russian market, since our legislation allows this. Now, of course, this is no longer relevant, but nevertheless, the solution was interesting.

The main question, as before, sounds like this: is it enough to just insert a large number of studs? What ensures dominance on ice? Only studs or the tire as a whole? 

A great test that answers this question was recently conducted by the Moottori publishing house. They compared budget tires in studded version and premium tires called "stickers" in the people. Surprisingly, the studs did not help, and the studded tires lagged behind in all disciplines. What's surprising is that even on ice. It's interesting that one of the models participating in the test, Winrun Winter-Max S1 WR60, had 190 studs. At the same time, both the number of studs and some elements of the tread pattern were similar to the Nokian Hakkapeliitta 9 model 

The braking results from a speed of 25 km/h were:
Premium non-studded tires
Goodyear UltraGrip Ice 3 —  14.75 m
Nokian Hakkapeliitta R5 —  15.02 m
Michelin X-Ice Snow  —  15.3 m
Pirelli Ice Zero FR  —  15.92 m

Budget studded tires
Tigar Ice —  16.42 m
Sunfull SF-W11  —  15.93 m
Antares Grip 60 Ice  —  15.25 m
Winrun Winter-Max S1 WR60  —  16.95 m

Interestingly, the most studded tire took the last place. We can conclude that studs are not everything. As we mentioned above, Winrun Winter-Max S1 WR60 is very similar to the Nokian Hakkapeliitta 9 model, and the number of studs is also identical. Out of curiosity, we found earlier tests of Nokian Hakkapeliitta 9 in the same size and at the same speed from the same publishing house. Of course, we understand that the results may differ significantly due to weather conditions, but we still want to understand the order of magnitude. As expected, the braking distance was significantly shorter than that of its studded counterpart, Winrun Winter-Max S1 WR60, and was 13.7 meters.