Benefit to square wheel setup vs staggered?

[Wookie107]

I currently believe having as wide a tire as possible both front and rear offers a substantial performance benefit in the form of grip and handling. I'm a 46 yr old newb mustang owner, so I may be entirely wrong. I don't like the sunken look of the front wheels. I want to upgrade them to something that has enough of an offset to eliminate the need for spacers. While I'm at it, I'm thinking I should entertain the possibility of a square setup so that I can rotate all four corners and have more performance at the same time. Is my logic flawed? Should I stick with the factory staggered setup? If I'm lucky, I'll get to the track at least once in my lifetime. Otherwise, I'm limited to spirited backroad driving.
I have a 2021 GT performance pack.

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[stannypack]

biggest pro to me is being able to rotate my tires, I don't push my car nearly enough to benefit from any staggering. 19x9.5 +22 offset (what I'm running) is flush in the front and barely pokes in the rear.

 

[MarquanTR]

I ran 275/40/19 square and 285/35/20 square and recently went staggered keeping the 285/35/20 up front and got 305/35/20 in the rear. I much preferred square from a handling point of view, tires lasting longer due to rotations is a plus too. I’m now moving to 305/30/20 square with the use of camber plates, spacers, and extended studs. I would go square but ultimately it’s personal preference.

 

[SheepDog]

I currently believe having as wide a tire as possible both front and rear offers a substantial performance benefit in the form of grip and handling. I'm a 46 yr old newb mustang owner, so I may be entirely wrong. I don't like the sunken look of the front wheels. I want to upgrade them to something that has enough of an offset to eliminate the need for spacers. While I'm at it, I'm thinking I should entertain the possibility of a square setup so that I can rotate all four corners and have more performance at the same time. Is my logic flawed? Should I stick with the factory staggered setup? If I'm lucky, I'll get to the track at least once in my lifetime. Otherwise, I'm limited to spirited backroad driving.
I have a 2021 GT performance pack.

The primary reason for these cars having a staggered setup is to help control/prevent oversteer. Understeer is predictable, oversteer is not (for most people anyway), and powerful rear wheel drive cars have a tendency to wrap themselves around trees or take out a crowd of bystanders with inexperienced drivers behind the wheel. Staggered setups do look good as well. If you want the best handling, as well as longer tire life, go with a square setup.

 

[Egparson202]

I ran 275/40/19 square and 285/35/20 square and recently went staggered keeping the 285/35/20 up front and got 305/35/20 in the rear. I much preferred square from a handling point of view, tires lasting longer due to rotations is a plus too. I’m now moving to 305/30/20 square with the use of camber plates, spacers, and extended studs. I would go square but ultimately it’s personal preference.

IMO this is the best setup. It has the advantages of rotation/tire wear and more balanced handling. Yes, it requires the addition of hub centric spacers and extended studs but that will be paid for after just a couple sets of tires.

 

[CR151S]

I love the staggered look but it would be nice to run similar tires on all corners. Namely for the ability to rotate them regularly. Discount cuts my tire warranty in half due to them not being able to be rotated.

In either case, backspacing is everything.

I run 19x10 (42 bs) and 19x11 (56 bs)forgestars and require small spacers up front.

 

[luc]

For handling you want squared with a few exceptions such as rear or mid engine cars, 911, Cayman, etc, that have a rear weight bias
Bottom line it should be bigger tires on the side that carry more weight but it would look very weird on a mustang to have bigger tires in the front than in the rear

 

[SheepDog]

For handling you want squared with a few exceptions such as rear or mid engine cars, 911, Cayman, etc, that have a rear weight bias
Bottom line it should be bigger tires on the side that carry more weight but it would look very weird on a mustang to have bigger tires in the front than in the rear

Yup, to the point that the Audi RS3 has wider tires on the front, to try and tame the absurd understeer that wrong wheel drive based, AWD systems have.

 

[AZlb5.0]

I run a staggered F/R 275/40 315/40. I get a really good off the line hit even on the streets. Have plenty of tire and wall for crunch.

 

[shogun32]

19x10et35 (or et40 combined with optional 3mm slipon spacer) and don't look back. replace pads with Powerstop Z23 or Z26 and you will live happily ever after.

Rokblox also highly suggested.

 

[MarquanTR]

IMO this is the best setup. It has the advantages of rotation/tire wear and more balanced handling. Yes, it requires the addition of hub centric spacers and extended studs but that will be paid for after just a couple sets of tires.

Yeah it took a while to get to this conclusion haha. I'll be having some 20 x 10 Velgen Classic V2's in satin black for sale as well as SVE MHP1 19 x 10 in graphite lol. Going to be going 20 x 11 for summer and winter wheels and 18 x 11 for track.

 

[Egparson202]

Yeah it took a while to get to this conclusion haha. I'll be having some 20 x 10 Velgen Classic V2's in satin black for sale as well as SVE MHP1 19 x 10 in graphite lol. Going to be going 20 x 11 for summer and winter wheels and 18 x 11 for track.

+1 on the 18x11’s for track. Just picked up a set and can’t wait to give them a try.

 

[HKusp]

Tramming in the front on uneven pavement is worse as you get wider up front. Around here the roads are in crappy shape with a lit of ruts, which makes squared wide front wheels a hand full.

 

[NightmareMoon]

19x10 ET35 square rotatable setup with 285/35R19 tires is soo easy and looks great. Its my daily setup (I also have race tire setups with 18x11/12 staggered wheels with 315 tires on all four corners, a 19x11 305 setup, and a 19x11 315 setup)

The staggered factory setup (on the PP1 cars) helps keep tramlining to a minimum and reinforces the factory tuning for safe understeer, but the understeer was too much for me and I wanted to rotate tires. The 19x11 ET35 is much more flush in the front and very flush in the rear.

Its harder to go wider than 10" with 285 tires unless you are staggered or start using spacers to get the front spacing correct for wider than 285 tires

 

[Wookie107]

19x10et35 (or et40 combined with optional 3mm slipon spacer) and don't look back. replace pads with Powerstop Z23 or Z26 and you will live happily ever after.

Rokblox also highly suggested.

Already installed the z26 pads this spring along with the MGW x spec shifter.

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