Winter tyre speed rating + autobahn?

[jbk]

Hey folks, I have a winter ski trip coming up in two weeks, I'll be driving my delimited M3 down to the alps, from Amsterdam down to French alps and I'm taking an easterly route through germany to do as much derestricted autobahn as possible north to south through Germany. I will hopefully have the conditions that on a few occasions I might be able to open things up north of 150mph for a stretch, but this time I'm running 235/40/18 Michelin Alpin PA3 winter tyres as opposed to the usual summer tyre pilot sport or cups that i usually use. The V rating on these winter tyres is only 'rated' up to 150mph, what exactly that means I'm unsure, maybe they guarantee no delamination due solely to velocity under these speeds or something?! So, I'm just after a bit of practical advice from someone that's got lot of experience with 'winter tyres' on higher performance cars to give me an idea of whether these tyres generally need treating with a bit more care and can't quite be relied upon as much as a quality sports summer tyre. Any advice or thoughts on this.

[jbk]

Thanks for your comments Rob, yeah it can get frustrating being on these roads when there is weight of traffic and yes you're right that much of it is indeed restricted these days. I think I have as good a route planned as is possible whilst heading in the direction that i need to be heading in, in terms of derestrictions and general weight of traffic and I'll be doing it at the quietest time of the week and day and of course I'll only be properly winding things up if conditions allow it.

So really what I'm after is some technical input from someone on what these V ratings really mean, what the specific technical risks would be on such a tyre at such loads. All to help me decide whether i take summer set up and run the risk of having to leave it at lower altitude when i get into the mountains but am better prepared for some proper autobahning if i get the opportunity, or go the winter set up for the mountains and just keep things sub warp speed on the autobahn or wind things up anyway pending what these V ratings really mean.

Thanks

Edited by jbk on Tuesday 24th February 23:30