To launch their latest and greatest gumballs, Michelin assembled the troops in Palm Springs, and the troops this time were a collection of everything from journalists to fanboys, from monied Ferrari guys to basement wannabes who post their every moment on blogs. This mob is what they call influencers; apparently the theory is that we—or some of us, anyway—have influence on the people we hang out with, or the people who read our work, or the people who follow us on line.

    Those people, I guess, are under the influence.

    I of course am the odd man out of this assemblage, if only because I remember the Olden Times, like before the Internet. I remember carburetors. I remember tires with tubes.

    And I also remember the benchmark high-performance tire: Michelin’s Pilot Super Sport, which succeeded the Pilot Sport II, which succeeded the Michelin Pilot Sport. Now we were gathered to check out the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S, which some marketing genius has written with a superscript 4—since they dropped super, were they intentionally replacing it subconsciously with a superscript digit?—so it looks something like this:

    MICHELIN PILOT SPORT 4 S.

    If you knew how long it took me to type that line, you would understand why this tire will henceforth be called the PS4S, at least if my fingers are the ones responsible for its appearance.

    Now, there are several ways to test tires, and since Palm Springs is in the general vicinity of the Thermal Club, an asphalt ranch that is also the home of BMW Performance Center West, I knew that we would probably see some handling exercises and perhaps a bit of track time. But apparently Michelin also has juice with the California Highway Patrol, so part of their program included a caravan of cars: Mercedes AMG SL coupes, Ferrari California drop-tops, and Audi V10 R8s. Yes, plenty for everyone: enough for us all to rotate through until each of us had driven all three.

    The route was the beautiful desert landscape of Joshua Tree National Park, a place close to my heart. But here’s the thing: I have been to Joshua Tree National Park before. I happen to know that it has a speed limit of 45 mph. Driving through Joshua Tree in a fast car is like cruising past an open bar when you’re on the wagon: sheer torturous agony.

    Not today, however, because our conga line of Mercedes-Ferrari-Audi, Mercedes-Ferrari-Audi—rinse and repeat—had one CHP SUV at the head of the procession, another bringing up the rear. Thus we got through the park in record time, although still rather constrained. Once out of Joshua Tree, the magic continued: By carefully manipulating the distance between cars to create a bit of running room, our social-media guy (and Roundel Weekly editor), Nate Risch, declared this to be the first time he’d seen 140 mph in a Ferrari.

    Nate Risch enjoyed a little Ferrari seat time.
     

    Still, a highway drive, even through nice twisty canyons, is not a proper tire test, so we returned to Thermal to hand over the keys to our Joshua Tree mounts and get behind the wheel of a few PS4S-shod BMWs. The lead-and-follow laps around Thermal’s short course were instructive, because the tires, as expected, let you put an M2 or an M4 exactly where you want it. And why not? The Pilot Super Sport had already set the bar for wet and dry braking, lateral stick, and whatever else you want to measure—but the PS4S now raises the bar on the established bar.

    More instructive, although not as much fun as track time, was a short autocross course including a wet hairpin. Here we had a chance to compare the PS4S with its competitors, mounted on identical BMW 340i’s—Bridgestones, Pirellis, and others—including stopping distance, and the Michelins consistently brought the cars to a dead stop three to five feet shorter than the other brands.

    Now that we had some idea where the autocross course ran, finally it was time for a run against the clock. That’s right, one run for bragging rights. I have never claimed any skill at autocross, since I tend to get lost in a sea of rubber cones, but I did manage to post a time that did not cause me to rend my garments in shame.

    The autocross board: A few minutes later, Nate Risch went right to the top.
     

    But then Nate, the autocross ringer that he is, upheld our BMW CCA honor by blasting through the course some two seconds faster than I—hell, he was two seconds faster than half the field! His name and 48-something-second time went right to the top of the board.

    You might say Nate Risch is stoked on the new Michelin PS4S.
     

    As his reward for topping the field in the autocross competition, Risch got his pick of the available cars for taking a hot lap with a professional driver. He chose the BMW Z4 GTLM car campaigned by BMW Team RLL two seasons ago, driven at Thermal by BMW Team RLL driver Kuno Wittmer.

    Nate Rish and Kuno Wittmer set out for a few hot laps in the BMW Z4 GTLM.
     

    The Michelin Pilot Sport S4 will be available in limited sizes starting in March, and I imagine that the autocross crowd is already lobbying for their favorite sizes. As I say, autocross is not really my game… but I also know that the right tire can be a game-changer. Whadda got in a nineteen-inch?—Satch Carlson