Running in winter tyres
Do you need to run in new tyres, and how do you do it properly?
In fact, the question is not complicated at all, and there is not much to discuss here. To answer the question about running in tyres properly, you need to recall how they are made. Put briefly and in a heavily simplified form - tyres are made from hot rubber compound in special moulds. The inner surfaces of the mould are smooth in themselves, and on top of that they are also coated with special release agents to make it easier to get the finished tyre out of the mould. This technology is universal for every maker and every tyre model, summer and winter alike.
What is the result? The result is that the surface of a new tyre’s tread is completely smooth (not porous, as the rubber’s structure would suggest), and it also carries traces of the mould’s release agent. It stands to reason that until the tyres have “bedded in” against the road and the agent has worn off the tread, their key properties will be well below their true level, which matters especially for winter tyres, and on a wet and/or slippery road surface. That is exactly why tyre makers strongly recommend extreme caution on the road for the first 500-700 km on new tyres.
And this recommendation has very little to do with tyre service life (as many motorists think) - it is first and foremost about driving safety, no more and no less. From the point of view of service life, tyres do not need running in at all.
The situation with studded tyres is similar. Online, and even at tyre centres, you will often meet sellers who will tell you, quite convinced, that studs “bed themselves in”, that you can lose them if you do not run the tyre in, and so on. That may be true to some extent for tyres with studs fitted by amateurs, but if the studs were fitted at the tyre factory, the chance of losing a stud is the same in the first 500 km as in the next 5,000.
But that does not mean you can drive aggressively on new studded tyres straight away! In any case, studded tyres behave far worse on tarmac (especially wet tarmac) than equivalent tyres without studs, and given the smooth tread surface and the traces of release agent on it, the need for a calm “running-in” period is even greater.
On top of that, new winter tyres are most often bought just before the winter season starts, and fitted to the car for the first time straight after the summer tyres. And given that winter tyres generally call for more careful driving and are not meant for high speeds, you need to get used to winter tyres in any case (even if they are not new). So from this point of view too, extra caution during this period (the first 500-700 km) is necessary and compulsory.
So, new tyres do not really need running in as such, but the driver very much does, because new tyres show very poor grip on the road surface for the first few hundred kilometres. I do not think I need to spell out what that can lead to.
Given all of the above, on any new tyres (especially winter ones, and especially studded ones), you should drive extremely carefully for the first 500-700 km, avoiding harsh braking, hard acceleration, fast cornering, speeding and other elements of extreme, aggressive driving. And in doing so you should be concerned first and foremost with your own safety, since the service life and performance of the tyres do not depend on running them in.