Review: The Bridgestone Blizzak 6 Offers Up a Performance Winter Tire Fit for Sports Cars

I tried out Bridgestone's latest winter tire on the Toyota GR Corolla and GR86

(Images: Zach Butler | TFL Studios)

Winter has come to Colorado, and it’s a perfect opportunity to test some newly developed tires to tackle the snow and ice!

Most folks across the U.S. have been toughing out snowstorm after snowstorm over the past few weeks. Even those who don’t usually come up against winter’s wrath saw at least some powder, which makes trying to safely get anywhere that much more treacherous — especially if you’re not accustomed to slippery conditions. Fortunately, when it comes to fitting your car with tires to handle the job (arguably the most important upgrades you can make for winter driving), there are plenty of options out there. As it happens, Bridgestone brought a group of journalists out to its Winter Driving School in Steamboat Springs, Colorado to sample two of the latest offerings.

Not only are the conditions perfect for reviewing winter tires, but we were able to experience those new tires — the yet-to-launch Bridgestone Blizzak 6 and the Dueler A/T Ascent — by blasting around a frozen, wind-blasted track…and that’s always fun.

A primer on the Bridgestone Winter Driving School and what we’re testing

At its core, Bridgestone’s Winter Driving School has been teaching drivers how to handle winter driving conditions since 1982, bringing in students from every state in the U.S. and dozens of countries around the globe. Driving instructors hail from a wide range of backgrounds, including racing series ranging from autocross to performance rally championships to touring car, stock car, vintage road racing and hill climb events. As you’d expect, some of that wealth of experience also comprises ice racing and precision driving challenges.

The driving school venue itself, located about 15 minutes outside Steamboat Springs, spans about 88 acres, with three purpose-built snow and ice-covered tracks. Our day of ice driving in a fleet of Toyotas mainly focused on Track 2 (roughly 15 acres) with a host of tricky spots to test your driving prowess, from off-camber corners — on a four-inch-thick layer of solid ice, no less — to elevation changes and surfaces that became rutted out and slicker over every run.

Courses span anywhere from a half-day (4 hour) session to two full days of instruction, while one-on-one private lessons and corporate training exercises are available, if you can afford it. Prices start from $355 (at time of writing) and go up several hundreds or thousands of dollars from there, depending on how much intensive winter training you’re looking for.

The folks at Bridgestone Winter Driving School started out our day in less powerful Toyota Camry and Highlander vehicles, each wearing a set of existing Blizzak tires. We took a few hours to learn the course and get our eye in on Blizzak WS90s with the Camry, and Blizzak DM-V2s on the Highlander. Through these cars, you learn three critical tenets of ice driving, with different color cones set out on the track to train you to look ahead in corners, adjust your speed to the prevalent driving conditions and, just as importantly, figure out the proper inputs for steering, braking and acceleration — namely, don’t try to handle two or more of those controls at the same time — before getting into the really fun cars…and testing Bridgestone’s latest Blizzak offering.

Learning winter car control on Bridgestone Blizzak 6 tires

Even coming into the Winter Driving School program as a Colorado native with decent experience driving through sketchy conditions, I tried not to be too cocky and overestimate my experience. And that’s a good attitude to bring into it, because the instructors and the course itself will humble you quickly. Mind you, one of the main points of Bridgestone bringing journalists out to Steamboat Springs for this adventure is to test its new Blizzak 6 tire. This new performance winter tire (shown above) effectively consolidates some of the ‘LM’ series tires in Bridgestone’s frankly confusing Blizzak lineup: the LM001, LM005, LM-32 and LM-25.

On paper, the Blizzak 6 is designed for sportier cars, including sports coupes, sedans, hot hatches like the Toyota GR Corolla and crossovers…naturally. This tire, set to launch in May 2025 (I’ll get into why below), brings the brand’s new ‘Enliten’ technology to its winter tire lineup, bringing in more recycled materials but also improving wear life over previous-generation Blizzaks. Bridgestone claims the Blizzak 6 has a 32% longer tread wear life against the LM005, at least in its own internal testing, meaning you can feasibly stretch through another season’s use before needing to replace them.

The company also claims this new rubber offers the “shortest stopping distance on wet roads”. To buttress that statement, it says the Blizzak 6 stopped in 35.1 meters, compared to the Michelin Alpin 6’s 35.5 meters; the Continental WinterContact TS870’s 35.9 meters; the Pirelli Cinturato Winter 2’s 36 meters flat; and the Goodyear Ultra Grip Performance 3’s 36.4 meters. (Update: Added Bridgestone’s testing numbers, done by its European development team.)

Apart from just changing up the formula as far as the tire compound itself, the Bridgestone Blizzak 6 also gets a new tread design to improve water evacuation and provide better digging force and snow-on-snow traction. Jagged, lightning-like slots on the shoulder blocks help trap snow, while the central V-pattern of the blocks aid in helping the car dig in as you accelerate, steer or brake. New “platforms” between the tread blocks as you move in from the sides also even out the wear energy exerted on the tires to help them last longer.

So, how well does the Blizzak 6 actually work in these conditions?

Overall, the afternoon driving session in the Toyota GR Corolla and GR86, both on Blizzak 6 tires, allowed plenty of time for initial impressions. The instructors split our time between trying out the sporty Blizzak 6 and the new Dueler A/T Ascent on 5th-gen 4Runners (which I’m covering over on TFLtruck, if you’re interested), so this is more a seat-of-the-pants style review than integrating a huge amount of technical data, as we’ve done in some past winter tire tests.

The 300-horsepower, all-wheel drive Toyota GR Corolla offered plenty of chances to get up to some impressive speeds without any major drama. If anything, as Roman’s also demonstrated in past videos, the Bridgestone Blizzak 6 impresses not just in how much grip you get off the line, but how quickly you can scrub off speed under braking and how well you can control any slides you manage to get into, whether you’re trying to or not.

Where Bridgestone’s claim of exceptional mobility and control on snow really shines, though, is in the rear-wheel drive GR86. On the launch, your need for proper traction is so much more important, and the Blizzak 6 dug in to propel Toyota’s well-balanced sports car without immediately spinning out. Even better, cornering proved immensely satisfying as I come off the power on a downhill slalom, before scrubbing off speed into a 180-degree curve and pulling off a well-controlled tail slide on the exit.

At least on first impression, the new Bridgestone Blizzak 6 feels like a proper evolution on older tires I’ve experienced. Regardless of which winter tire you end up fitting to your car, though, these tests show just how important it is to install the right kind of rubber to protect your car and yourself (and other motorists, for that matter) through the season. The performance you actually feel with the Blizzak 6 isn’t necessarily defined by out-and-out speed — again, you should still temper your speed to the conditions — but how well you can maintain control and recover when you hit that unexpected ice patch or come into a corner a little too hot in your expensive sports car.

Bridgestone didn’t specify launch pricing, and that will vary across the 38 tire sizes in which the Blizzak 6 will be available. The new model will be available in several 17 to 22-inch wheel configurations, including 20 new combinations that weren’t covered by the old LM-series tires. When we all asked why the company is counterintuitively launching the tire this summer, its product communications team noted that it provides time to produce and stock enough tires in distribution centers by the fall, when people will get around to buying winter tires for the upcoming season.