Firestone Winterhawk 4 is a directional friction tire designed to be installed on passenger cars and city SUVs. Coming at an attractive price, this tire model offers great performance for typical weather conditions of the Central Europe.

Before the company set out to design a new flagship model of this Bridgestone subsidiary, it conducted a poll of more than 20,000 European motorists. The interviewed motorists shared about the driving problems that they are confronted with on a daily basis, as well as about their need for winter tires that would perform equally well on snow and on wet pavement alike, which allowed the Firestone engineers to create a model fully matching the needs of the end consumers: the Firestone Winterhawk 4, which came to replace the Winterhawk 3, is all about ensuring optimum control and the best possible handling response in unpredictable conditions. The new model provides better control on snow and ice due to the new optimized tread pattern that has kept its symmetry and direction. Due to an increase in the number of grooves in the shoulder areas of the Winterhawk 4, the engineers were able to improve the tire’s traction on slippery surfaces and to optimize the contact pressure for more efficient winter braking. The wide drainage grooves not only help to quickly evacuate water and melted snow from the contact area – their zigzag shape creates an edge effect, which results in better overall traction. The combination of these constructive features ensures good performance of the Firestone Winterhawk 4 on snow and short stopping distances on wet pavement. The in-company tests conducted by Bridgestone in March 2020 at the indoor test facility Arctic Falls in Sweden showed that the traction delivered by the fourth-generation Winterhawk tires (225/45 R17) on snow exceeds the results of the predecessor model by 7%: to accelerate from 10km/h to 35 km/h, the Winterhawk 4 needs 2.72 seconds versus the 2.92 seconds shown by the Winterhawk 3.

In March 2020, yet another presales test of the Winterhawk 4 was performed. At Bridgestone’s request, it was conducted by the TÜV SÜD expert team on the ATP Papenburg test facility in Germany. The test experts recorded a 4% reduction of the Winterhawk 4 braking distance while braking from 80 km/h to 20 km/h on wet pavement: whilst the Winterhawk 3 needed 29.4 meters, the new tire demonstrated a 28.3 stopping distance (report #713183177). In both cases, the test car was VW Golf.

In addition, the tire maker mentions better fuel efficiency of the new 2020/2021 model.