Yokohama ADVAN APEX V601: Track Tested, Driver Approved
Latest ultra-high performance tire from Yokohama impressed on the street. Can it win us over on the track as well? Â
Yokohama has a new ultra-high performance tire on the market, the ADVAN Apex V601. A few months ago, I put a set on my 2016 Cayman S to put them through their paces. My initial impressions were positive. I put some miles on them in both dry and wet conditions on my favorite backroads. I tested their straight-line grip with a few standing start launches. The tire performed flawlessly in every road test I could throw at it.
I concluded that for the street this was one of the best UHP tires you could buy. If you factor in the lower price as compared to many rivals, it may just be the best choice. But what about a track day? A Porsche belongs on the track, so can the Apex V601 survive or even thrive on a road course?
To find out, I left my usual track wheels and tires at home and headed out to New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, New Jersey. I spent two days running on the 1.9-mile, 10 turn circuit known as Lightning Raceway. This is one of my favorite local tracks and a great place to test tire performance. I have run over 1,500 laps here in many different cars on various tires, so it gives me a good baseline to compare the performance of Yokohama ADVAN Apex V601.
Typically, I run my Cayman here on Bridgestone RE-71R tires on 19-inch wheels. The Yokohama tires I have mounted on my 20-inch street tires, and they are not the same performance category as the ADVAN Apex V601. However, as I was about to find out, the V601 acquitted itself quite well.
Specs
Here are the exact specifications, courtesy of Yokohama:
 235/35ZR20 92Y XL
 Tread Depth: 9.0
 Overall Diameter: 26.5
 Overall Width: 9.3
 Approved Rim: 8.0 – 9.5
 Maximum Load: 1389 lbs @ 50 PSI
 Weight: 26.5 lbs
 265/35ZR20 99Y XL
 Tread Depth: 9
 Inflated Diameter: 27.4
 Overall Width: 10.5
 Approved Rim: 9.0 – 10.5
 Maximum Load: 1709 lbs @ 50 PSI
 Weight: 29.3 lbs
Driving to the Track
I have a tow rig, but still have not bit the bullet and gotten myself a proper trailer so I still drive my car back and forth to the track. As such, it is nice to have a more street oriented tire such as the V601. My event was held the first weekend in November.
In this part of the country that can mean anything from snow to sweltering heat. Sometimes all in the same day. We didn’t have snow, but we did have cold and heat. I left home in the pitch dark a little after 5 AM. The air temperature when I left was a brisk 39 degrees.
Like all high-performance summer tires, these temps are not ideal for optimal performance. However, the tires seemed more than happy on the 80-mile journey to the track. Naturally, I was not pushing the limits on the cold streets, but I felt nothing but confidence in the rubber underneath my car. The ride was comfortable, safe, and secure.
A couple weeks back on my way to the same track I was on the RE-71R tires and though it was warmer it was also a bit wet. To be fair the tires were worn and seeing their last weekend, but that drive was much more of a white-knuckle affair. I kissed the ground when I arrived safely. By comparison, the trip on the Yokohama tires was downright boring. Exactly what you want when you are just trying to get somewhere safely.
Allow me to say a word about the data. I am very familiar with this circuit, and have driven it on the Yokohama ADVAN Apex V601, Michelin PS4S, and Bridgestone RE-71R tires. All tires were mounted on the same car, and on the same wheels with me driving. However, all of these tests were not run on the same day in the same conditions.
They were all dry weather days and with roughly the same air temperature. However, a racetrack is a living thing, and its conditions change from day to day. I am also a living thing, and I am not a pro driver that can bang in dead even lap times lap after lap. The point is the results here are based on my experience and can give you a general sense of how these tires can perform but your mileage may vary.
Track Day – Lap Times
The days may have started out dark and cold, but the bright sun warmed us quickly to an unseasonable almost 80 degrees by mid-day. There was barely a cloud in the sky. Absolutely perfect weather for a track event. I was there to not just test out the tires, but I was instructing for the National Auto Sport Association Northeast Region on both Saturday and Sunday. As a result, I often had a passenger in my car with me.
Some points to consider when looking at my lap times. Most of my clean laps were run with a passenger, and on a track with other traffic. In addition, I am not a lap time chaser at this point in my life. I like to drive my car home at the end of the day, so I am not doing full on qualifying laps. I push to a comfort level and see no need to push it beyond that in a streetcar.
And finally, I am not Lewis Hamilton. I happily concede that there are quicker folks out there. What I am looking for is consistency out of the tires I am running. I know what laps I can pull in the RE-71R tires, and I wanted to see with the same amount of driving effort what the V601 tires could do.
Factory recommend tire pressure for my car is 33 PSI at all four corners. For dry track duty in these temps I typically go with a couple PSI below that and for this weekend I ran at 30.5 PSI all the way around. The tires seemed to be happy there, so I didn’t monkey with it much all weekend. The tires were wearing evenly, not rolling over on their sidewalls and were not overheating, so the pressures seemed good.
The speeds seemed good as well. Around this track on the RE-71R tires I am typically running laps in the 1:17.5 range when I am driving alone. This weekend, with passengers, and on the larger and heavier 20-inch wheels I was running in the 1.20.2 range.
To me, that is a very respectable showing and a heck of a performance out of the V601. The quickest lap was a 1:20.257. I ran this course once back in 2019 on the Michelin PS4S tires also on my 20-inch wheels. My fastest lap that day was a 1:20.323 (also with a student in the car). So, the Yokohama ADVAN Apex V601 actually gave me a quicker lap than the PS4S from Michelin.
As I stated earlier, I was looking to see how consistent the tire would be over several laps. At one point I got five laps of clean air to run without much traffic. My times in those laps were: 1:20.257, 1:20.267, 1:20.696, 1:20.721, 1:20.784.
As the tires heated up, they gave up a bit of grip and the times fell off accordingly, but overall I think they were amazingly consistent. In my testing, in my car, with me behind the wheel the Yokohama ADVAN Apex V601 was not just equal to the Michelin PS4S but even a bit quicker.
Summary of Lap Times at NJMP Lightning:
 Average Fast Lap on Bridgestone RE-71R on 19-inch wheels: 1:17.5
 Fastest Lap on Yokohama ADVAN Apex V601 on 20-inch wheels: 1:20.257
 Fastest Lap on Michelin PS4S on 20-inch wheels: 1:20.323
Other Metrics
Lap times are interesting but there are some underlying metrics as well. Lateral acceleration is one of those metrics. I have measured lateral acceleration on this same circuit on the V601, PS4S and RE-71R tires. Below is a summary of the maximum lateral acceleration I recorded with each tire.
Maximum Lateral Acceleration (g) of Yokohama ADVAN Apex V601 on 20-inch wheels: 1.23
Maximum Lateral Acceleration (g) of Michelin PS4S on 20-inch wheels: 1.18
Maximum Lateral Acceleration (g) of Bridgestone RE-71R on 19-inch wheels: 1.43
As expected, the RE-71R was the grippiest, as it is more of a track-oriented tire. However, the V601 still performed quite well here. It exceeded the grip of the PS4S in my testing.
On the front straight of this circuit I typically see a top speed in the mid-130 mph range. Below is a summary of the fastest top speeds I recorded with each tire.
Maximum Speed of Yokohama ADVAN Apex V601 on 20-inch wheels: 136.1 mph
Maximum Speed of Michelin PS4S on 20-inch wheels: 133.8 mph
Maximum Speed of Bridgestone RE-71R on 19-inch wheels: 136.0 mph
The V601 was a tick faster here overall and it was consistent all weekend. By every metric that I tracked the V601 performed equal to or better than its chief rival from Michelin. This may be good time to remind you that the Yokohama is about 30% less expensive than the Michelin.
Intangibles
On to the butt dyno stuff, and the things that don’t necessarily show up on my data logger. How did the Yokohama tire feel overall on the track? In a word, fantastic. Under heavy braking going into turn 1 I could detect a hint of squirminess, but it was nothing severe. Outside of that, I felt quite comfortable on the tires.
There was never a moment where I felt that the tires wouldn’t hold me. Turn in was sharp and they didn’t even squeal like a typical street tire sometime does. It is true they are not as sticky as the RE-71R, but that is not a fair comparison. The trade off is the V601 will last significantly longer than the RE-71R.
The V601 also held up well to the track abuse. Over the weekend I put about 110 track miles on the tires, and they held up surprisingly well. No chunking, or delamination or uneven wear. Sure, you can see that they were driven on a track, but they held up just fine. I drove them the 80 miles back home after the event with no issues whatsoever.
Final Thoughts
I honestly don’t know what more you could want from a tire. The Yokohama ADVAN Apex V601 impressed me initially with its street performance. Now that I have some track miles on it, I am even more impressed. The tire can handle the backroad twisty bits with aplomb in the dry or wet. It can even perform well when the temperatures drop below the designed operating range. The track performance was icing on the cake. It was fast, predictable and wore well. It did everything I asked of it and I asked more of it than most typical buyers ever will.
The Michelin PS4S is a fine tire, and I still have a set at home myself. However, I am really struggling to justify paying the premium price for it when the V601 performs just as well. You can debate my performance results and that is fine, but for me, on my car with the way I drive, the V601 is a perfect tire.
If you need to chase tenths of a second around a track you should be on an r-comp anyway. If you want a great street tire that is also a solid track performer then Yokohama has you covered.
When it is time for me to plunk down my hard-earned money on my next set of tires, the decision will be easy. I will be looking for another set of ADVAN Apex V601 tires from Yokohama. A more difficult decision is going to be figuring out how I want to spend the money I am going to save.
Photos: Mike Woeller from Wind Shadow Photo Studios; Joe Kucinski
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