More durable/affordable tire option?

[drecords]

One of the intents of our rules (as listed in the 2019 rules) is to limit costs, I feel like with stickers at all or at least most events we're missing that part these days.


Looks like the alternative options will be the Nitto NT01 & the Falken Azenis RT615K+ & the TOYO R888R (one article suggested 12-15heat cycles was the end of 888R's).

I reached out to the Spec Corvette guys to ask them about their experience running the Azenis tires (Class mandated tire for Spec Vette). They said they're getting 4 race weekends per set, no falloff and are as fast at the end of the 4th weekend as when they start. This was the closest to parity to CMC that I could find, in that its not a miata or other lightweight vehicle, makes decent power, and is running sprint races...

Aggie doing math -- your mileage may vary:
We have 7 events this year assuming ECR comes back later, retail cost of new RR's (28 total) for each event is $7336 before you factor in contingencies. Or 73.4% of the street value of my racecar (being optimistic) I went through some 'tire budgeting' math and it gets better, but still not great -- If I ONLY put good tires on for 6 sessions per weekend (2 quals, 4 races) I'm down to a total of 42 heat cycles on 'good tires' or 3.5 sets assuming I pull them off at 12 when they turn to stones. If I skip an event to save cost, I can see doing it in 3 sets at a tire cost of $3144, or 31% of the street value of my racecar. This doesn't factor in friday practice days on old tires that result in setup changes based on bad tires, etc...but you could squeeze it to $3144. Would it be a 'competitive' effort against someone showing up with new tires every event? Probably not, then again maybe you win some contingency and knock that down and buy more tires.

[Pranav]

You guys are over complicating it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jQeBbEbztc

[Supercharged111]

My understanding is that the 615K+ fixed the greasing issue...haven't read anyone having trouble with new compound tires specifically.

On contingency, my thought would be that we wouldn't pursue it given than the number of tires needed per season was drastically reduced. Even winning an event a weekend and finishing well in another, a top guy is spending 3-500 per event to stay on sticker RR's depending on how close to the top step of the podium he was. If Azenis last say, 3 weekends we're spending $250-275 per weekend on tires. If you don't get contingency, well...you guys can do math

I'm not looking to step on toes w.r.t. toyo and NASA, just trying to find a way to make our racing more cost effective and still just as much fun. TOYO makes the R1R which is a 200TW street tire, maybe we consider that option?

The NT01 is made by Nitto...so we'd still be leaving the toyo umbrella with that one, though I liked those tires on the ecobooze at COTA.

I know your intent is not to step on toes, that's why I just said be careful depending on how far you take this. On the other hand the powers that be may notice and take interest in a good way depending on how it's perceived.

You guys are over complicating it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jQeBbEbztc

Hmm, we ought to be able to use that to fulfill the 4 sticker minimum?

[Sook]

The #82 and #99 are on board for a falken test at Cresson. That makes 5, the more the merrier.

- Josh

[mach1]

The #82 and #99 are on board for a falken test at Cresson. That makes 5, the more the merrier.

- Josh

Boom! $814 shipped from tire rack vs $1100+ for RR's, love it!
Ironic, RR's are backordered from Tirerack....

[BryanL]

Great points throughout this thread. Ever since we left the original RA1 I think the tires have hurt our series. I don't care if lap times are two seconds slower-finding a tire that doesn't fall off past 20 heat cycles I believe would only help our series.

Completely agree this isn't the sort of class that someone should have to budget what their car is worth in tires alone. The tires have doubled the cost of a season of racing if you want to be at all consistently competitive.

If it works for Spec Corvette then it should work for us (I hope). They have more power than us and about the same weight and if we could get 4 weekends out of a set I think it would be awesome. It would also help people wanting to run test days and practice.

I agree with whiny Records. I'll also throw out if we are all on a different tire without a contingency then we could all hit Hallett again and see if their Comma group would put us in a race class or one with a separate start. Jerry and I discussed and we would rather go to Hallett twice a year now that we have lost TWS.

If Discount carried them you could stock up when they have their sale and likely knock another $100 off a set. But sounds like I would only need 1 set per year which would be awesome.

[drecords]

Great points throughout this thread. Ever since we left the original RA1 I think the tires have hurt our series. I don't care if lap times are two seconds slower-finding a tire that doesn't fall off past 20 heat cycles I believe would only help our series.

Completely agree this isn't the sort of class that someone should have to budget what their car is worth in tires alone. The tires have doubled the cost of a season of racing if you want to be at all consistently competitive.

If it works for Spec Corvette then it should work for us (I hope). They have more power than us and about the same weight and if we could get 4 weekends out of a set I think it would be awesome. It would also help people wanting to run test days and practice.

I agree with whiny Records. I'll also throw out if we are all on a different tire without a contingency then we could all hit Hallett again and see if their Comma group would put us in a race class or one with a separate start. Jerry and I discussed and we would rather go to Hallett twice a year now that we have lost TWS.

If Discount carried them you could stock up when they have their sale and likely knock another $100 off a set. But sounds like I would only need 1 set per year which would be awesome.

Discount sells em. If you catch it right and sign up for their credit card you can get some screaming discounts...

[AI#97]

If it works for Spec Corvette then it should work for us (I hope). They have more power than us and about the same weight and if we could get 4 weekends out of a set I think it would be awesome. It would also help people wanting to run test days and practice.

.

Comparing tire wear and performance on a C5 corvette to a 20-30 year old pony car chassis is like comparing a fine wine to a greasy crecent wrench. Sure the tires are round and black but the alignments they can run and chassis/suspension and shock dynamics they can run are decades better. Having owned all THREE chassis I can say I would not take that data point to heart to make this decision. After chatting with Daniel about the tires we ran in WRL (Hankook RS4's at under $700/set) I warned him that you guys need to remember what driving a track prepped car on 200TW street tires at 10/10ths or 10.5/10ths is like....especially without ABS and in heated battles for 25-40 minutes. If you think driving is sloppy now, it will only get worse and body repair bills will go up. 200 TW tires just don't have anywhere near the grip or heat resistance a true race tire does. Those that have done WRL type events can attest to this. James did rip off a 1:25 on a 255/17 200 TW Hankook at Cresson in a car he had never driven and he had not been on track for a few years.....BUT, you can only do that for a lap or so and you drop time dramatically. These tires at COTA were 4 seconds off Qual times for CMC on RR's...at hour 8 which is just ONE heat cycle.

I suggest NT-01's. Wear VERY well and not badly priced. That being said, you can all agree to go back to the RA-1 too and keep the contingency in place and rotate rain tires into your wear calcs....granted that tire is expensive too but I don't recall there being a drastic fall off on the "gen2" tire? I never ran them in AI.

[RichardP]

Boom! $814 shipped from tire rack vs $1100+ for RR's, love it!

Interesting stuff. I have heard so many times that Toyo is so generous with their contingencies. At first blush it even seems true. But are they really? Does anyone think the cost of the contingency (and all the money paid to NASA as a sponsor/advertiser) is baked into the cost we pay for tires? Of course it is. It’s a business. Toyo isn’t a charity with a goal of supporting indigent racers. They are trying to make money.

So we pay extra for tires with the hope that we can do well enough to get some of it back. More realistically, it’s the slower racers that are effectively subsidizing the faster guys. It’s probably a bit more than that, though. Since we are mandated to use these tires, they can charge a bit more than normal market forces would dictate. Actually, it’s way worse than that. They have designed the tires so that the only way to realistically get substantial money back is to spend even more money on tires more often. It’s a positive feedback loop with Toyo laughing at us. It’s way more ingenious than just doubling the price and then getting everyone excited about a half off sale.

Does anyone like to turn in their Toyo bucks? I know I do. It’s like scratching off the last box and finding that you have won $500. You show it off to your friends and they are jealous. No thought is ever given to the fact that your prize came from a stack of scratch offs that you blew $1K on. You don’t even care that you didn’t actually win anything. You know the fine print on the back says the only thing you can do with your winnings is buy more scratch offs. What else would you do, anyway???

The good news for those that want to get off of the merry go round for some reason is that you can usually dump your big Toyo prizes on one of your friends for at least $.60 on the dollar. Yeah!


Richard P.

[centerville]

Where's the like button.

Everyone knows the game or should.