Federal RS-RR Review!

The Federal RS-RR is an extreme performance street tire aimed to compete with other 200 treadwear tires on the market right now (Some regions may list this as a 140 TW). The target group will use the tires for track days (bro), autocross and some street use. Lets begin!

Lets start off with these things run WIDE! Rule of thumb, the size you pick is actually one size bigger than the number listed. The tread pattern reminds you of the tribal vinyl options in NFSU2.

Lets start with the good this tire offers, the performance. The grip is phenomenal, the RS-RR has extremely high limits. There is a lot of grip to rely on, allowing your car to really take corners at speed; making your car feel closer to its dream of being a racing car than ever before. The sidewall is rigid and allows for a lot of response through your finger tips. If you can break these loose, they do it progressively and snap right back into grip quickly. For autocross, these need a little heat or else they will be slippery. One run is good enough for the rest of your sessions. For the track, I went last week with them being decently worn. Even with the heat of the track, my fourth session felt as great as my first session. The tires maintained grip throughout the 20 minute session and failed to dissapoint. Warming them up on the lap before the green flag drops helped.

Don’t take this as “This is the performance street tire to end all of street tires” because it is not. For this review we are going to focus on its main competition only. This would include other 200 treadwear tires like: Hankook RS3’s/RS4’s, Direzza ZII Starspec, Nexen Sur4(G), Bridgestone RE71R and the BFGoodrich Rival S. I will say this now, I love these more than the ZII’s and the RS3’s. I have experience with both of those and will stand by the fact that these are faster. I have driven on the RE71R and the BFgoodrich tires, those will be faster, those tires can take a lot more input and speed through a coner making them a bit faster. I haven’t had much experience with the Nexens or the RS4’s so I won’t say anything there.

Okay so they aren’t the fastest nor the slowest, what do they do good? The cost is where these excel. I paid $540 shipped for a set of 275/35/R18’s. Go ahead and see how much the competition costs in that size on TireRack.com. I’ll give you a second. Done? No? Okay well I’ll tell you. RE71R’s: $1067. BFGoodrich: $1253. Direzza ZII: $1207. Ouch for tires you know will get destroyed on the track. See, the thing is they aren’t terribly slower than these tires either. I have been able to beat other cars with these tires with my RS-RR’s. On the flip side, I am sure if I had the RE71/Rival on my own car and me driving, I would beat my own times. What this means is this tire will still allow you to be competitive in a discipline with different cars and drivers. This tire will let you bring your car to extremely high limits, the tire won’t be the weakest link if these are used. Can you shave a little more time off with the some of the others? Yes. Is it worth it? That is for you to decide.

Now that I wrote a bible about performance, lets talk about the lesser things in a performance tire. Noise: OMG THESE ARE LOUD, WHY CAPS LOCK? BECAUSE I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE MINIATURE JETLINERS THESE TIRES PRODUCE IN SHEAR NOISE. Comfort: What, why do you care about that? Buy a Continental all season. Wet traction: They are okay when the road is damp or at lower speeds, but heavy rain on the highway and/or puddles? A little poo will come out. Life: Its a board game. Tire Life: I can’t really give you a good idea. I shearly used these as a race tires and I shaved off 20% of the life from driving without ABS one event, oops. Others I have talked to get 5-6 full track days before they heat cycle out.

As always, here is my video review on these. Please watch it. Ignore the “tint” on my lense. Comment with any questions you guys have. I hope you enjoyed this write up like I did. Thanks!

This content was originally posted by a Car Throttle user on our Community platform and was not commissioned or created by the CT editorial team.