The Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season is a high performance tire that offers decent traction values on multiple conditions. But is the tire up to the mark, especially among its peers? Well, lets find out.
Being a tire engineer, my testing show that the Goodyear Eagle Sport AS is a nice, well rounded tire. Let me break it down for you. So its wet performance is reliable, and it stands out on snowy terrains, though with some room for improvement on ice. The tire’s tread life is satisfactory, but its deeper tread and weight slightly compromise fuel efficiency. While it effectively dampens road noise, its ability to absorb road disturbances could be better.
Table of Contents
Sizes and their Specs
The Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season is currently coming with 15 to 22 inches wheels, and they have the following specs.
- Speed ratings: H, V and W.
- Load ratings: SL and XL.
- Tread depth: 9 to 11/32″.
- Weight range: 17 to 40 lbs.
- Treadwear warranty: 50k miles.
- UTQG rating: 560 A A.
Tread Design
The Eagle Sport AS comes with an asymmetric tread 5 rib pattern.
The middle 3 ribs create 4 circumferential grooves, and they all have almost similar linear siping on them.
In terms of other biters, two of those ribs have slanted in-groove ones, while one of them only has small notches (attached to the siping’s end).
The shoulder lugs are bulky compared to the central area, but still pretty packed up.
They although have lateral grooves, all lugs are joined up by an adjacent rib.
Talking of features, these lugs have curved siping on them, which join towards longitudinal slits.
Internally, the tire comes with 2 ply polyester casing, with 2 steel belts, and a spirally wrapped polyamide on the very top. Though like to add on its polyester casing, that it features RaceWrap technology, where the plies are placed at an angle to enhance tire’s handling (for the most part).
Find all the tires compared with Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season.
Pavement Performance Analysis
When navigating pavements, streets and highways, a tire that establishes a firm, steadfast connection with the ground is of course one of the most crucial aspect.
And its not a problem with our boy here. Let’s check out how it performed in each section.
Straight Line Grip
This grip is crucial in maintaining (and keeping) linear direction and it depends substantially on the central tread area.
And as its “directional”, it makes sense why it gets calculated by the tire’s accelerating and braking efficacy.
The Goodyear Eagle Sport AS, being a high-performance all-season tire, manages this well.
I mean, its not the best here, but it’s close. When tested against the top ranking tire here, the Michelin All Season 4, it only showed a minor shortfall in braking, (less than a single foot).
So you probably won’t notice any difference while driving both tires, in real life scenarios.
And it makes sense why its so great here looking at its tread, where it features 3 continuous running central ribs, with slanted biters and siping.
The continuous rib design allows constant contact between the tire and the road, ensuring grip. While the added notches help it cling to the ground even further.
Handling Grip
The Goodyear Eagle Sport All Season displays remarkable control, particularly around tight corners, owing to its planted and stable shoulders + sidewalls.
Basically its cleverly designed shoulders, offer consistent connectivity with the road, as all lugs are interlinked with each other by a secondary rib, (see its tread design).
And while the tire gets good rubber contact, the lateral grooves (between shoulder lugs) also act as in-groove notches, due to that same secondary rib, providing extra lateral traction.
However, the superior sideways traction from this tire isn’t the last piece of the puzzle. And that’s where the tire’s steering characteristics come in.
Steering Response
A tire’s ability to respond to steering inputs is a reflection of its handling capability, that you can never ignore.
And in this case, the Goodyear providing sharp, linear feedback, primarily due to its rigid rubber compound, offers precise steering and agile handling.
This even goes for, when the tire is in rapid transitions, where you are slightly pushing the front tires to their max grip.
But you should know that in wider turns, this responsive steering can still mislead sometimes, possibly leading to unintended understeering, requiring last-minute adjustments by the driver.
And that’s happening by the tire’s relatively larger tread depth.
You see greater tread depth is directly proportional to lug flexing, as the tire corners, this basically results in sluggish steering feedback.
But thanks to the tire’s stable foundational supports underneath all its (tread) lugs, its still not hurting its overall handling (compared to other tires in the category). I mean, you still get above average lap times (on average), here.
For Your Info: In my dry handling test, the Pirelli All Season Plus stands out, outranking all in the group.
Winter Performance
Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season still showcases commendable handling, braking, and acceleration efficacy, specifically on snowy terrains.
I mean it lacks on ice overall, but its performance there is still on par compared to the rest of its direct competitors.
It’s superior snow handling comes form its shoulders, where it features dedicated (for snow), longitudinal slits on both of its shoulder ribs. While snow braking is form the help of its slanted notches in the middle.
Now the weakest point of the tire here is its snow acceleration, and that makes sense since its continuous running ribs don’t allow for scooping snow backwards (which basically generates most of the forward momentum).
For Your Info: The tire does not have the 3PMSF (3-Peak Mountain Snowflake) certification, (but its common for its category).
Tread Life
The longevity of a tire’s tread is determined by 3 key areas.
- Tire’s rubber composition.
- Tread depth.
- Overall structural weight.
- And contact patch of the tread.
But why they are important here? Well the rubber composition tells about the wear rate. For example softer tires wear faster.
And tread depth tell you about the time it would take for a tire to reach down to when its time to replace them.
The last two points are interlinked, where lighter weight puts less pressure on the lugs as they rub against the surface (adding to wear), while having a nice contact patch allows tires to evenly distribute the weight pressure.
Now, among its category, the Goodyear Eagle Sport AS gives pretty satisfactory performance, where its stiff enough rubber does great, and its tread depth of 11/32″ (usually tires are seen with 10), also helps.
That’s why you get a confidence inspiring treadwear warranty of 50k miles. And yes, its not a lot, but given that the tire is coming in high performance category, its pretty standard.
Wet Performance
When it comes to wet performance, the 3 main factors worth discussing are the tire’s overall wet grip, steering, and its ability to resist hydroplaning.
Let’s start with the grip.
Wet Grip and Steering Response
This tire distinguishes itself with above average directional grip and control on wet surfaces, where as a driver, you feel, that your car is anchored and manageable.
But, the tire needs some help in the steering department. I mean it needs to refine its control a little bit, where I’d love some increased rear rotation as well, (which would basically prevent it from under-steering).
Now the tire although offers ample siping and biters in the middle, its minimalist shoulders are the main cause of this problem here. That’s why tire’s straight line grip is so great, while the handling lacks (as it depends on shoulders/sides).
With just linear siping there, combined with the tire’s harder rubber compound, the overall traction and steering gets to be limited a bit.
Hydroplaning Resistance
Hydroplaning occurs when tires lose contact with the road surface due to water interference.
So tires employ wide grooves to channel water out efficiently, but at elevated speeds, water may not disperse quickly enough, (affecting the tire’s handling on water-covered surfaces).
And that’s why we use float speeds to determine the overall resistance here.
Basically there are two tests here, where the straight float speed test determine the tire’s efficacy to channel water out longitudinally, while curved float speeds (another test), tells about tire’s lateral water dispersion ability.
Now, the Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season performs admirably in straight aquaplaning tests, no doubt, but it exhibits mixed results in curved settings, especially in deeper water, making the handling feel somewhat unpredictable.
And this is due to the tire’s unbroken longitudinal channels and very packed up shoulders (not allowing water to leave out sideways).
Fuel Consumption
Fuel consumption is all about tire’s rolling resistance.
But how is this resistance generated in the first place. Well here, tire’s weight, and tread depth are the major contributing factors.
And that’s why it makes sense why the Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season can improve here a little bit.
Being a high performing all season, its greater tread depth although helps with wear, it has a negative impact on its fuel usage.
Technically speaking, since lugs have greater length, they are more susceptible to bending. And here the tire’s weight is also not helping, featuring 2 ply polyester casing, taking its weight up to 40 lbs, one of the highest you’d find among its peers.
This weight puts more pressure on the lugs, and they get more prone to flexing, which results in energy loses (as those lugs have to reshape back again).
And the tire isn’t able to offer you with good enough fuel economy, as a result.
Ride Comfort
Ride comfort is primarily contingent on two key aspects:
- The dissipation of tread noise.
- The tire’s capacity to absorb bumps.
Now, although the Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season might not be exemplary particularly in providing a smoother ride, it does better in terms of noise dampening.
Basically its tread compound contain polymers which help greatly with the noise reduction, but at the same time can’t offer adequate bump soaking abilities. Let me explain.
Basically air is the main cause of noise, and as that air strikes around the tread, the biters/siping on the tread create growling sounds, and although those are of mild to low volume, they get further amplified as they create an echo within.
This echoing of the sound waves basically produces in-groove resonance.
Now the Goodyear mitigates growling with the help of variable pitch pattern, while in-groove resonance is dampened down by the tread’s composition, which is absorbing of those sound waves.
But very same composition also becomes stiffer too, so its not able to manage vibrations effectively.
Take Home Points
The Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season is a versatile high-performance tire that offers pretty competing dry traction, with its impressive straight-line grip, handling traction, though the tire does lead to unintended understeering due to its larger tread depth (as seen on tests).
In wet conditions, the tire provides good directional grip, though there are areas for refinement in steering response, just as seen in its dry performance.
Though its hydroplaning resistance has no complaints.
For winter conditions, although there’s this room for improvement when it comes to icy tracks, the tire is pretty appreciable of soft snow.
Moving on, the tread life of the Goodyear is satisfactory for its category, with a rubber composition and tread depth that supports extended wear. Though the very same features also lowers its overall fuel economy.
Comfort performance is also a mixed bad, where the tire is pretty quiet, but lacks in absorbing bumps effectively.
