Most of the time, AUTA (and probably every other outlet that dispenses automotive advice) extol the virtues of having more tyre grip. More grip is more safe, because it means braking distances are shorter, chances of spinning out are lower, and you have a greater ability to pull off an emergency maneuver if you have to.

But perhaps in the most spectacular example of “do as I say, not as I do”, to a certain extent I personally tend to seek out less grip. A large part of the enjoyment of fast driving comes from feeling and working to keep control of the car’s chassis beneath you, which tends to happen only at the limits of adhesion – this is especially true when oversteer is involved. With less grip, those limits are breached much more easily and at much lower speeds, which means you can fully play with your car’s handling with more time to react and less chance of things spiralling out of control.

The folks at Driven Media on YouTube clearly seem to agree, because they’ve taken this train of thought and taken it to its furthest conclusion. Tyre grip tends to decrease with width, and so to maximise fun factor, they replaced a Caterham’s standard grippy UHP rubber with super-skinny space saver tyres, and put it through a series of tests.

Burnouts, drifting, donuts – all of these become much easier to do, and as you can see in the video below, leaves a huge grin plastered on the faces of all involved. We definitely wouldn’t recommend swapping out your wheels for spare tyres, but within reason, you don’t always have to go for the “best” (which are usually the costliest) tyres out there…