2 cents from the past and now outside....

There were several reasons that I stopped racing, some race-related and some not. However, the RR tire issue was a big factor for leaving and remains an issue that would have to be resolved before I return. The issues of cost, build quality (mostly the threat of tread seam separation), performance drop-off and Toyo contingency parity seem to reflect what a lot of others have already stated.

I believe that Nitto is still part of the Toyo family. The Nitto NT01 is a very good tire with a lower performance capacity but with better lifetime consistency, a lot like the old RA1. With that in mind, does anyone think that Toyo would be interested in having the Nitto NT01 as the CMC tire the Toyo RR as the AI tire? This would better match the cost factors of the two series and allow Toyo to put the Nitto name out there a bit more. The risk there is that Toyo will just crank the pricing up on the NT01 due to being a race specific tire.

UTGR treadwear numbers are not exactly reliable performance indicators. The treadwear number that is generated in controlled tests is the highest number that the tire manufacturer can put on the tire. The manufacturer can choose to advertise a 200 TW tire as a 140 TW tire if they choose to do so to market the tire as a high-performance model. They cannot say that a 140 TW tire is a 200TW tire.

Contingency programs that award heavily to the top finishers need to be evaluated, especially with a tire that is considerably faster as a sticker tire. Aaron McSpadden capitalized on this when he ran CMC and was able to have fresh tires at every session that he wanted. I will give kudos to Aaron for having a good set-up and reliable car as well as high driving skills. I don't think the top contingency prize should be able to fully fund an entire tire budget.

Currently, if I was to get my CMC car out of storage, I would buy a set of NT01's and run a variety of different events on different tracks with a variety of groups.

Oh, and man do I miss TWS!


Rob Liebbe