I would say it depends on the car.
Warren and I are pretty much finished running studs. He may comment on this more
The last 2 years all that the studs did was give a couple of "god like" runs for us and then they started to fly out of the tires. We bought the best "these wont come out" kind of tires and drove them on the street as recommended, the things just blow out with the transition from ice to snow to gravel/dirt, and a heavy right foot they just don't hold up on our car and with us driving it.
A lighter car (chang) driven by an old lady (chang) with no torque (honda)
maybe could hold up with the studs, but I think next year we will just run some rubber to ice tires instead of the studded tires. Ice racing you could get the studs to stay in, but the mixed surfaces we have are very hard on the tires.
A rubber to ice tire designed without studs is better than a studded tire that has lost all of it's studs. The studded tires have bigger blocks (to hold the studs) with fewer sipes in them, and are not so good on the ice when they lose studs. Also if you do any ice racing a tire with 5 studs left in it is going to run in the studded class regardless, and those guys have all the studs in there still.
If you are picking a tire just for winter races a set of blizaaks/hakka 5's/hakka r's maybe graspics would be great. If you are picking a tire for the whole season the winterforce can't be beat. They are good in the snow, ok on the ice, great in the dirt, great in the mud.The real soft tires just don't hold up on the dirt they get shredded pretty fast.
Note there was no mention of all seasons anywhere in this post. If you go to Nashville or Virginia and the course is bone dry hard pack maybe you could run all seasons, maybe azenis would work. Don't try it in NER
