R26 Tyre width

I am guessing there will be a few opinions on this one :-) Mine is... 225 for pilot sport saves around 150 for 4.. so for me, I would have had to have gone for cheaper tyres at 235 so my take was any difference by going from 235 to 225 was overcome by getting better tyres.

 

i have 225 instead of 235 for the same reasons.
only thing is they do look stretched across the rim visually.

 

I raced on a mixture of 225 and 245 wide tyres on a RWD car on 8" rims where the 'correct' width was the 225. Its not a straightforward answer I am afraid. On that particular car I preferred how it drove on the wider tyres because firstly it picked up the inside rear tyre less so had better traction and secondly the movement on the side wall helped to blur out the cars movements and put a bit of angle on the car helping to kill off the understeer. I actually liked 225 front and 245 rear the best despite that in theory making the understeer worse up front and the handling more lively (more sidewall movement on the back). Could similar benefits and effects be translated onto a Megane? Well IMHO yes to some degree, I preferred my cars handling on PS2s to AD08R because the much stiffer construction on the Yokos seems to encourage corner exit understeer the car just didn't have before, OTOH it is also much easier to drive on the Yokos as pretty much all Michelins have shall we say 'busy' characteristics when your on it (they require constant driver input in the form of small corrections).

Note that in theory you can't really generate much if any more grip from a wider tyre as the download caused by weight transfer onto the tyre is the same so really we are talking about dynamic differences in handling versus weight differences which if done right should tend to favour lighter wheels and tyres (thus smaller tyre). However one should note that often people who have modified their cars are looking to pick up a little more traction from bigger wheels and wider tyres, its always a trade off to see if that really benefits the cars performance overall.

If I could afford to spend it on this car I would be going with super light 18x8 OZ rims (Allegerita?) and 225 wide Cup 2 Michelins.