More durable/affordable tire option?

[drecords]

All,

Starting this thread to see where people are at on this subject. Looking at my season costs, tires are #1 on the list. The current RR seems to fall off around 8HC and then really hard after 12HC and in my case at MSR-H on Friday, were so far gone by 15 that the car handled funky and couldn't even be called predictable. New tires fixed the ailment... Loose nut behind the wheel has yet to be 'fixed'

From talking to a few of you, it sounds like we have similar experiences. Testing the groups feelings around moving to a 200TW street tire like the Falken Azenis RT615K+. I cite this one because it's available in a 275/40/17. Reviews suggest they do pretty well on the long Enduro cars and I didn't see much (from an inexhaustive search) about negatives...no easily found cases of chunking, greasing up, etc.

That all being said, I'm not sensitive to the politics that put us on toyo, nor can I see the downside to buying 2 sets a season instead of 7. Also cheaper per tire to the tune of about $54. 208 vs 262 on tirerack.

If there's enough agreement, I'd be willing to pony up for a set for cresson and run the street tire time trial class to see how laptimes stack up...

Cliff notes: RR's too expensive, whiney records wants cheaper tires.

Flamesuit on...

[mach1]

If we can get 5 on board I'll CMC race you in Cresson on Azenis

2 down 3 to go...

Actually, you may want to reach out to some of the 200TW tire manu's to see if they will sponsor our class with their own contingency.

[Storm Trooper]

Francice and myself ran NT01s for a enduro. Four hour enduro and the tires hardly look worn. David raced on them for probably a season second and fourth race they hold up really well.

Nitto NT01 High Performance Tire - 275/40R17 98Z https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004QL6PYY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_kYAwCbY5BNQKC

[Sook]

If we can get 5 on board I'll CMC race you in Cresson on Azenis

2 down 3 to go...

Actually, you may want to reach out to some of the 200TW tire manu's to see if they will sponsor our class with their own contingency.

I'm interested in this experiment as well. 3/5

Class of 5 CMC/Azeni cars.

- Josh

[Sook]

I did a 24 hour enduro in an integra (really light car*) on one set of azenis, no chunking, no real fall off in laptimes from the very first session to the very last. Tires still had lots of life left at the end.

- Josh

[Supercharged111]

FWIW I had the 615s when they first came out, so pre-K, and they got greasy and scary when hot. This was on a 2400# car in the touge of Okinawa, no way in hell I ever heated those the way I have heated tires on the Camaro and Z06 here on real tracks. That's always stuck in the back of my mind. I know the compound has changed, but I never really hear of people raving about these tires for track days, HPDE, etc even if they are the Formula D tire of choice. I'd caution you about trying to get a contingency deal from Falken though, you'd be stepping on NASA/Toyo toes.

[ShadowBolt]

The NT01's make more since to me but if we get a tire that last we don't need a contingency.


JJ

[Sook]

The NT01's make more since to me but if we get a tire that last we don't need a contingency.


JJ

The NT01 is still a Toyo, I'm skeptical that one way or another we won't get screwed again.

- Josh

[drecords]

FWIW I had the 615s when they first came out, so pre-K, and they got greasy and scary when hot. This was on a 2400# car in the touge of Okinawa, no way in hell I ever heated those the way I have heated tires on the Camaro and Z06 here on real tracks. That's always stuck in the back of my mind. I know the compound has changed, but I never really hear of people raving about these tires for track days, HPDE, etc even if they are the Formula D tire of choice. I'd caution you about trying to get a contingency deal from Falken though, you'd be stepping on NASA/Toyo toes.

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.

[ShadowBolt]

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.

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 think Nitto is made by or owned by Toyo.
My question is how many more racers could we get if we had a tire that lasted three weekends?

JJ

[Sook]

The RR is durable, it'll last 3-5 weekends in terms of rubber. It's the first weekend that's 2 seconds/lap faster that's the issue. If Toyo baked out the tires before they sold them we'd probably not be having this conversation.

A tire that's equally bad for 3 weekends would be excellent. A tire that's fast the first weekend and horrible forever after doesn't make for a good amateur race tire IMO.

- Josh

[drecords]

I think Nitto is made by or owned by Toyo.
My question is how many more racers could we get if we had a tire that lasted three weekends?

JJ

I don't know the answer to this, I don't know that it's something we can count on...most people who look to get into the sport come at it from a car cost perspective and less on what consumables cost initially. At least that was my experience.

I'm coming at this from the angle that it's unsustainable to have a $10k race car and spend $6-8k on tires per season to be competitive.

That being said, I think CMC will be a more attractive landing spot for folks making the step to W2W if we have competitive operating costs. To attract more racers I think we should look to what Spec Corvette is doing w.r.t. social media presence, etc. Different subject for a different thread though...

[mach1]

It would be great to stay Toyo and maybe work some kind of contingency, I hear the R1R falls off pretty quick after a few laps though. I wonder what the best 200TW tire is for our application.

[drecords]

It would be great to stay Toyo and maybe work some kind of contingency, I hear the R1R falls off pretty quick after a few laps though. I wonder what the best 200TW tire is for our application.

A quick Google says they get greasy in higher temps and were more aimed at being an AX tire. We're limited by the 275/40/17, and my goal was to keep that size because we would be able to keep same wheels, etc. I'll do some more research on all the tires in 275/40/17 in the 200TW range and report back this evening. My main priority is a tire that's consistent through it's life and still fun to drive on...

[Trublu]

Ahh, the annual tire thread. My two cents: Wouldn’t it be simpler to have a tire allowance per season retaining Toyos and contingency they offer? Plenty of race classes manage this fairly easily

[Sook]

Ahh, the annual tire thread. My two cents: Wouldn’t it be simpler to have a tire allowance per season retaining Toyos and contingency they offer? Plenty of race classes manage this fairly easily

Which classes? I had not heard of that working. Not a bad idea, seems like it would be hard to police.

- Josh

[drecords]

Ahh, the annual tire thread. My two cents: Wouldn’t it be simpler to have a tire allowance per season retaining Toyos and contingency they offer? Plenty of race classes manage this fairly easily

It's possible -- have to register barcodes, enforce that people are finishing races with barcodes they registered, etc. Not a bad option either. Also doesn't stop someone from saving the sticker tires for an event late in the season or someone from showing up for 1-2 races and mopping the floor with the field on old tires. Trade-offs...

My chief counterargument to losing toyo contingency would be that if we only needed 2-3 sets of tires per season, we wouldn't need contingency to offset tire cost.

[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

[ShadowBolt]

I don't know the answer to this, I don't know that it's something we can count on...most people who look to get into the sport come at it from a car cost perspective and less on what consumables cost initially. At least that was my experience.

I'm coming at this from the angle that it's unsustainable to have a $10k race car and spend $6-8k on tires per season to be competitive.

That being said, I think CMC will be a more attractive landing spot for folks making the step to W2W if we have competitive operating costs. To attract more racers I think we should look to what Spec Corvette is doing w.r.t. social media presence, etc. Different subject for a different thread though...

You are correct about car prices being why someone may look at CMC to start racing for the first time but it does not take long to figure out that tire cost is the killer. Also I wonder how many racers would consider dropping down to CMC from another class (assuming they needed to cut their cost of racing but still wanted to race wheel to wheel) but they know the tire issue and just drop out of racing all together. I can name several guys that used to run CMC that will not come back due to the tire issue (cost).

JJ


JKJ

[blk96gt]

You are correct about car prices being why someone may look at CMC to start racing for the first time but it does not take long to figure out that tire cost is the killer. Also I wonder how many racers would consider dropping down to CMC from another class (assuming they needed to cut their cost of racing but still wanted to race wheel to wheel) but they know the tire issue and just drop out of racing all together. I can name several guys that used to run CMC that will not come back due to the tire issue (cost).

JJ


JKJ

Any class that runs the RR has the same problem. The classes that don't run RR's either run the Maxxis RC1 or a Hoosier. Maxxis has the better contingency (and better tire life) but you won't win without a Hoosier, which doesn't have near as good of a contingency program as Toyo or Maxxis.

[mach1]

How does the RC1 handle heat cycles? Maybe it's an option?

$1300 for stickers for Cresson hurts right now, Hoping we can get 5 to agree on an alternative. Then of course, what about the summer shootout....

[drecords]

How does the RC1 handle heat cycles? Maybe it's an option?

$1300 for stickers for Cresson hurts right now, Hoping we can get 5 to agree on an alternative. Then of course, what about the summer shootout....

Maxxis RC-1 appears to be out of stock.

[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

[drecords]

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.



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

My aim is simple, I want to have fun racing the best class in road racing, with the best people, for less money. I don't have a political motive, I don't hate Toyo. Their product isnt bad...they're great tires for 8-12HC. Edited.

[AllZWay]

I don't remember the tire Matt White had on the car for the 8 hour enduro at COTA, but that was a pretty impressive tire. It ran all 8 hours and could have ran all 16 hours I think and didn't seem to give up much over the day.

I never raced the RR, but the old Toyo tire was pretty comparable and this tire was full tread.

[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...

[t500hps]

I'm on the east coast (VA) so our tracks and temps are different but none of us have problems with RRs falling off like it seems all of you have. We field 10+/- cars per race and seems everyone gets 3-4 weekends out of a set of RRs. I've actually noticed I'm not as fast in the first 3 H/C of new RRs. With careful rotating I've gotten 36 H/C out of a set (however they were falling off). We run VIR often and last year I set the track record on a 3 year old set with 22 H/C on them.

Now, I have no issue changing tires if it makes the class cheaper to run but I have 3 sets right now with various use, including a 2015 set I intend to "finish off" when we start the season. I'm just curious if we are "giving something up" with car setup that allows the tires to last much longer than yours? Wish I could have made the trip to COTA to compare! :)

[mach1]

Can everyone please post up and confirm when you’ve placed your order for the new tires, I probably will not be ordering until later in the month because we need to get the car on the Dyno first and figure out where the horsepower went. The Fact that spec Corvette is running the same tire successfully is very exciting!

[ShadowBolt]

I am going to run the tires that I bought new for COTA at Cresson (may be a mistake). Then I am going to need a new set of something for Hallett. The way the schedule is I doubt I will run more than those two events this year (unless we end up running ECR). I doubt I will run COTA or NOLA (for two different reasons) and the Roval sounds fun but not in August (I'm a wimp when it comes to hot weather).


JJ

[mach1]

Also, you can probably off load sticker RR's to AI for more than you would pay for a set of the 615's

[liquidroam]

To answer the question about numbers in the series, I was absolutely one of the people that probably would have lasted an additional season before having to take a sabbatical to rebuild funds. As most know there were some extenuating circumstances for this year but it would still make a huge difference for me to be able to run competitive. My first season I ran used tires that were between 8 and 20 HC. Huge savings but ran mid to rear pack. Since contingency is not a concern I vote verbally (not with my wallet yet) that commit to one (Azenis) for this season and re-evaluate at the end of the year.

[Supercharged111]

I'm on the east coast (VA) so our tracks and temps are different but none of us have problems with RRs falling off like it seems all of you have. We field 10+/- cars per race and seems everyone gets 3-4 weekends out of a set of RRs. I've actually noticed I'm not as fast in the first 3 H/C of new RRs. With careful rotating I've gotten 36 H/C out of a set (however they were falling off). We run VIR often and last year I set the track record on a 3 year old set with 22 H/C on them.

Now, I have no issue changing tires if it makes the class cheaper to run but I have 3 sets right now with various use, including a 2015 set I intend to "finish off" when we start the season. I'm just curious if we are "giving something up" with car setup that allows the tires to last much longer than yours? Wish I could have made the trip to COTA to compare! :)

My tires seem to be good to around 20 HC as well, but I did have a set with just over 20 that tried to kill me during practice last April (bad batch?). Then in November we did more cheater practice and I had around 30 cycles and they were busy, but not trying to kill me. I ran within a few tenths of the record at HPR with ~20 HC tires back in early Sept, record was set in July. Do they use different materials to build the tracks in TX? We generally get up as high as the low 90s for a high here, though typically it's more in the 80s range. I have Bryan to deal with here in RM, so we're not really driving miss daisy. Pueblo was resurfaced back in 2012 I think and High Plains was done last winter, both asphalt.

[ShadowBolt]

I know some of you get tired of hearing this but I was getting some instruction from Eric Foss at TWS a few years ago and he told me if I put on new RR's I would drop 2 seconds a lap. I did and he was right. He said he knew that was going to be the case because he had been with Tyler the day before and when Tyler put on sticker RR's he dropped two seconds per lap. The tires I took off were in the 14-16 heat cycle range. This is the only time I got lap times from old to new tires in the middle time of day on the same track. half an hour apart.

JJ

[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.

[centerville]

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.


This is what I wonder about with 200tw tires.

So far on both cars I have ran NT01's and have been happy. But I am not driving as hard as you all do. To this point I have planned to buy 2 sets of tires a year. After reading this thread I might need to rethink that.

[michaelmosty]

It's possible -- have to register barcodes, enforce that people are finishing races with barcodes they registered, etc. Not a bad option either. Also doesn't stop someone from saving the sticker tires for an event late in the season or someone from showing up for 1-2 races and mopping the floor with the field on old tires. Trade-offs...

My chief counterargument to losing toyo contingency would be that if we only needed 2-3 sets of tires per season, we wouldn't need contingency to offset tire cost.
I haven’t read this whole thread yet, but why are people buying more than 3 sets of tires per season?

[martinsntx]

I haven’t read this whole thread yet, but why are people buying more than 3 sets of tires per season?

I bought 3 sets last year and 2 sets for Nationals. Year before that was 3 sets. The new set I put on for first race this year at MSRH was almost 3 seconds faster from practice to Q1. I do not know how many heat cycles were on the practice tires but tread was gone.

I'm fine running a different tire as long as everyone is on the same.

[Sook]

I haven’t read this whole thread yet, but why are people buying more than 3 sets of tires per season?

Because there are more than 3 race weekends. Empirical data is showing (for some guys at least) the RRs are loosing a significant amount of time and handling characteristics after the first weekend even though they have quite a lot of rubber life left in them, about 4-5 weekends worth of rubber.

Have you not heard of the RR heat cycling issue before? It's certainly not a new topic of discussion. I wasn't around for the old RA days, having a crappy tire that's crappy for its whole life sounds perfect for this type of racing.

- Josh

[michaelmosty]

Because there are more than 3 race weekends. Empirical data is showing (for some guys at least) the RRs are loosing a significant amount of time and handling characteristics after the first weekend even though they have quite a lot of rubber life left in them, about 4-5 weekends worth of rubber.

Have you not heard of the RR heat cycling issue before? It's certainly not a new topic of discussion. I wasn't around for the old RA days, having a crappy tire that's crappy for its whole life sounds perfect for this type of racing.

- Josh

I am very well aware of the heat cycling out issue. To me, that is just a question all of us have different answers to. How much do you want to spend? I have raced either every event or every event -1 in all my 13 years of racing. I have never used more than 3 sets of tires / season.

To keep racing as cost effective as possible for me I choose the events I want stickers vs the events I don't have the ability to. I raced MSRH with the same tires I ran Nationals. My plan is to use those tires for inverts at MSRC and then put stickers on for qual and Toyo races. I will then finish MSRC with 4 heat cycles on the stickers and then use them for COTA.

Do I think I am losing time vs bringing stickers to every event? Absolutely. Is it worth it to me to bring stickers to each event? Absolutely not?
All of us have different personal preferences for what we are able to spend for racing.

[Pranav]

I'm with Michael

You do not need a set of stickers for every event

Running stickers for warmups and inverts are a waste

If you're driving around bad setup, or like to hang it out in turns, etc, you will age out your tires faster

I run my worst tires on Friday, my 2nd best for warmups and inverts, and my best for quals and toyo races.

I'm on the 3 set program myself as well

Still believe the NT01 is a solid choice; I use those for DEs...

[blk96gt]

I am very well aware of the heat cycling out issue. To me, that is just a question all of us have different answers to. How much do you want to spend? I have raced either every event or every event -1 in all my 13 years of racing. I have never used more than 3 sets of tires / season.

To keep racing as cost effective as possible for me I choose the events I want stickers vs the events I don't have the ability to. I raced MSRH with the same tires I ran Nationals. My plan is to use those tires for inverts at MSRC and then put stickers on for qual and Toyo races. I will then finish MSRC with 4 heat cycles on the stickers and then use them for COTA.

Do I think I am losing time vs bringing stickers to every event? Absolutely. Is it worth it to me to bring stickers to each event? Absolutely not?
All of us have different personal preferences for what we are able to spend for racing.

I pretty much do the same thing as Michael. At Houston I was using the tires I used at Nats. I will probably get a new set for Cresson and use those again at Cota, and likely a sticker set at Hallett.

[RichardP]

Do I think I am losing time vs bringing stickers to every event? Absolutely. Is it worth it to me to bring stickers to each event? Absolutely not?
All of us have different personal preferences for what we are able to spend for racing.


Wouldn’t it be cool if didn’t have to give up time against your competitors when you don’t show up with new tires???

One of the big goals of the CMC rules is to take money out of the competition equation. For example, with the chassis dyno, it doesn’t matter if you spent big money building up a fancy engine or pulled one out of the junk yard. Everyone restricts to the same numbers. Same thing with wheels. Expensive custom wheels are restricted to the same weight as cheap ones. It’s really hard to prevent people from spending money looking for a competitive advantage. The goal of the rules is for there to not be a competitive advantage by doing so. With rules like that, people are less likely to spend the big money and no one really cares if they do.

With the current tires, that’s not really what we have. If you spend more money on tires, you have a very noticeable competitive advantage over those that don’t. Even if you don’t win, most people want the belief that they could win if they did a good enough job of driving. The belief that you can’t win unless you spend big money on tires tends to erode participation in the series.


Richard P.

[michaelmosty]

I agree Richard but this same tire situation is going to be present with any other race group that runs a race tire. It doesn't matter if you are CMC, AI, SM, GTS, etc, whoever shows up with stickers at every event is going to have an advantage.

Is it because CMC is more of a budget series? Heck, I am on a tight racing budget and couldn't even bring rain tires to Nationals when the forecast called for rain all event.
I totally understand where everyone is coming from on a budget stand point.

[mach1]

Is it because CMC is more of a budget series? Heck, I am on a tight racing budget and couldn't even bring rain tires to Nationals when the forecast called for rain all event.
I totally understand where everyone is coming from on a budget stand point.
For sure, I’m willing to bet 2 sets of 615’s will last a season, $1650 vs $3400 for RR’s and more competitive every race weekend. No need for rains just keep your second set of 615’s for rain

[Sook]

this same tire situation is going to be present with any other race group that runs a race tire.

A spec tire class doesn't have to run a race tire.

- Josh

[RichardP]

Do I think I am losing time vs bringing stickers to every event? Absolutely. Is it worth it to me to bring stickers to each event? Absolutely not?
All of us have different personal preferences for what we are able to spend for racing.


Thinking about this more, I have other stuff to add. First, your attitude on the subject is great. It's uncommon in the world and certainly isn't pervasive among "racers". That attitude doesn't exist at Red Shift Racing. We want to kick you ass every time the green flag drops. We just do. Its a significant goal and a great achievement against a worthy competitor when we pull it off. It's not tolerable to us to be uncompetitive just because we didn't pony up for tires. Conversely, beating you because you showed up on dead tires is lame and unsatisfying. We want the accomplishment of beating you (and all the others) when you are at your best. Then we want to drink beer with you afterwords and revel in how we pulled it of, 'cause it doesn't happen as often as we would like.

So, we don't want to spend the money to buy tires every event. We don't want to force you to buy tires for every event. Mostly, we don't want you to show up with lame tires so that when we kick your ass, it's something to celebrate.

Seems like if we had tires that sucked equally from stickers to cord, this whole series would be more fun. And way less expensive...


Richard P.

[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.

[Supercharged111]

Food for thought: I heard cost on our RRs is $200/tire (ASSuming this is true). Yes Toyo is a business and businesses are in the business of making money, but they also like writeoffs. . .

[ShadowBolt]

Michael and Kevin using older tires for non Toyo races is fine but like Richard I want to run as fast as possible in every race. Since I only run two races per weekend one of those will not be a Toyo race. I do not want to run tires that are even half a second slower per lap. Different strokes for different folks. I would like a tire that is slower and would not change from new to corded. I just don't know if there is such a thing.

JJ

[Supercharged111]

Maybe pre cycled out tires are the answer here.

[ShadowBolt]

What is the difference in the RT615K and the RT615K+?

JJ

[Sook]

Food for thought: I heard cost on our RRs is $200/tire (ASSuming this is true). Yes Toyo is a business and businesses are in the business of making money, but they also like writeoffs. . .

$279.05/Tire this year.

- Josh

[ShadowBolt]

$279.05/Tire this year.

- Josh

Are you joking? Almost $300.00 per tire plus freight for RR's?

JJ

[Supercharged111]

$278 from Phil's so should include shipping.

[Al Fernandez]

I don't have answers, but this has been a recurring issue since NASA went to the 888.

[drecords]

I am very well aware of the heat cycling out issue. To me, that is just a question all of us have different answers to. How much do you want to spend? I have raced either every event or every event -1 in all my 13 years of racing. I have never used more than 3 sets of tires / season.

To keep racing as cost effective as possible for me I choose the events I want stickers vs the events I don't have the ability to. I raced MSRH with the same tires I ran Nationals. My plan is to use those tires for inverts at MSRC and then put stickers on for qual and Toyo races. I will then finish MSRC with 4 heat cycles on the stickers and then use them for COTA.

Do I think I am losing time vs bringing stickers to every event? Absolutely. Is it worth it to me to bring stickers to each event? Absolutely not?
All of us have different personal preferences for what we are able to spend for racing.


I agree Richard but this same tire situation is going to be present with any other race group that runs a race tire. It doesn't matter if you are CMC, AI, SM, GTS, etc, whoever shows up with stickers at every event is going to have an advantage.

Is it because CMC is more of a budget series? Heck, I am on a tight racing budget and couldn't even bring rain tires to Nationals when the forecast called for rain all event.
I totally understand where everyone is coming from on a budget stand point.

My aim for starting this thread was totally centered on budget. I wanted to start the discussion about 200 TW street tires because I think if we can have as much fun as we do and lower the cost per event we all win. The endurance racing series that are gaining popularity that run them have something very right in their formula, those events are serious fun and tires are way less of a factor. I think the alure of low cost is something that keeps people showing up and sticking around in those series.

I agree with the sentiments that we don't want the tires to be the deciding factor in everyone's season. Part of racing is car management, I understand that -- but none of us are going to run Daytona and the cars tend to create enough reliability opportunities that taking new tires out of the performance equation that is CMC would be a net benefit to the whole group (in my opinion).


Michael and Kevin using older tires for non Toyo races is fine but like Richard I want to run as fast as possible in every race. Since I only run two races per weekend one of those will not be a Toyo race. I do not want to run tires that are even half a second slower per lap. Different strokes for different folks. I would like a tire that is slower and would not change from new to corded. I just don't know if there is such a thing.

JJ


Maybe pre cycled out tires are the answer here.

They just turn to such unpredictable junk. I'll take a slower predictable street tire all day over a 15hc RR rock.


What is the difference in the RT615K and the RT615K+?

JJ

New compound -- better for track driving. Like i said previously, the 615k+ is the Spec Vette tire choice and those guys spoke positively about them. How that is not a direct comparison has been highlighted elsewhere in this thread, but is a good data point from a standpoint of 'are these tires total junk or are they a possilbe option?'

[liquidroam]

Soooooo lots of options but they all boil down to two options. Run 615+ or stay with the current format. I think everyone understands the facts at this point. Someone have a email distribution list for the Texas group? Happy to put together a survey monkey and send it out.

If we want to wait on that for now we just need 5 to agree to be guinee pigs at Cresson. And then we can all review data. I would say that a part of that agreement would be to run the 615+s in every session to maximize the groups ability to look at time degradation during heat cycles.

since I will not be driving I am happy to record subjective opinions on handling after each session from each driver and document it in one excel file so that it can be charted. Then we can pull the objective data, times both average and best, to see how they align with each other. That is about as complete as I can think of it.

The combination of objective data combined with subjective opinions that are tracked throughout the weekend should provide really good feedback. We can do a survey monkey after that.

[Trublu]

Call me Opportunistic but all you CMC guys running the non spec tire are welcome to increase the AI car count by running with us. 9 entries would be nice for Toyo bucks

[RichardP]

With a thought of changing from the spec tire, I thought I would put down some of my thoughts on the current RR’s. First, some relevant tire parameters:

Life – I’ve found the current RR’s have a pretty long life. I regularly run tires that are on their fourth event (‘cause I get them for free). Josh has run sets well into their fifth event multiple times before they completely give up or cord out. In order to get them to last that long, you can’t flat spot them when they are fresh and you have to have reasonably good camber and balance. You also need to flip them on the rim, preferably after every event. Still, that’s a lot of laps for a race tire.

Durability: Dan got a puncture at the last event but I think that’s the only time I remember having an issue. Also, there is a potential issue with the tread seam coming apart. We run the tires in the recommended direction at the first event and then ignore the direction for the rest of the tire’s life. Our team has only had an issue with the seam on one tire when it was new and that came with a serious vibration. Seems to be a pretty tough tire to me.

Endurance: How hard can you push the tire in a session before the grip goes off? The biggest complaint about the 888 was that if you pushed it at all, it would get greasy and grip would vaporize. It was no fun to drive and almost prohibited on track battles. It was horrible for racing. In this respect, I think the RR’s are pretty amazing. You can abuse and over drive these tires and, for the most part, they seem to keep holding their grip. I think abusing these tires hurts their effective life but they hang in there. I think this is a critical parameter to an exciting race tire.

Looking at that stuff, it seems like a great tire. I actually think it is. If someone was handing out fresh tires every race day, I think this would be a spectacular spec race tire. But, tires aren’t being given out and there are a couple of other critical parameters that make these tires not so good for a class that needs to run a set of tires in multiple events to make the budget work. In a class that is supposed to give each competitor equal grip from a spec tire, this tire has more variability than any other performance parameter.


Heat cycling: This is a common term for the performance of the tire falling off after a certain number of track sessions. I see numbers all over the map of how many heat cycles people think these tires are good for. I’ve come to the conclusion that the term “heat cycles” probably isn’t the best terminology for these tires. It’s not that heat cycles don’t apply to these tires, it’s just that heat cycles aren’t all created equal. I think it’s more that the tire is capable of a certain amount of time at temperature. The higher the temperature, the less time you have. The number of effective heat cycles you get depends on how much abuse the tire sees. These tires tolerate over driving pretty well but it comes at the expense of reduced effective performance life.

So why does the performance of the tire drop after use? Tire construction, materials, chemistry, and processing is very complicated and generally considered complete voodoo even by tire engineers. In the past, it’s been said that race tires effectively come as partially cured rubber. Further heating and distortion of the tire finishes up the curing process and the tire becomes harder. There is some thought that Toyo could process the tires differently and deliver them fully cured. In theory, this would lower their initial performance but make them more stable over their life. I’m not sure if that’s true but I sure would like to see it. I believe Toyo’s incentive to do that is low…

Handling: I think this is one of the most fascinating aspects of this tire. I have heard so many times that popping on a fresh set of RR’s will cure all of the car’s handling issues. People love how these tires handle when they are new and hate how they handle when they are all used up. Changing the overall amount of grip can have a small effect on handling balance but it shouldn’t dramatically change the handling.

I believe what is changing is the effective shape of the slip angle graph. The slip angle graph for this tire seems to have a pretty flat and wide peak on fresh RR’s. This wide peak allows good grip over a variety of slip angles and masks subtle balance issues and handling deficiencies. As more time/abuse is put into the tire, not only does the peak grip level dip down a bit, but the peak becomes sharper. This sharp fall off of grip past the peak quits masking issues and requires the driver to sense much more subtle inputs to keep the car near the peak grip level. The car is just flat harder to drive. The drop in performance depends not only on the condition of the tire but also the base handling of the car and the ability of the driver to deal with the sharper peak. If anyone has any further insights to expand or contradict this thought, I’d love to dig into it deeper.


On a practical application of this knowledge, we’ve found driving through a handling imbalance is a bad idea with these tires. One event at Cresson had Dan with a bit of understeer early in the weekend. He thought it was tolerable and didn’t want me to change anything. A couple of sessions later, he had abused the front tires enough that the front tires were signing off and the understeer was now magnified to intolerable levels. We made changes every session that should have made the car an oversteering pig with no success. I didn’t catch a clue to what was happening until we got back to the shop and looked at the differential tire wear front to rear. Now I hammer on balance with Dan early in the weekend and we often end up changing rear springs or sway bars during the event to keep on top of it. When the engine runs, anyway…


Richard P.

[liquidroam]

With a thought of changing from the spec tire, I thought I would put down some of my thoughts on the current RR’s. First, some relevant tire parameters:

Life – I’ve found the current RR’s have a pretty long life. I regularly run tires that are on their fourth event (‘cause I get them for free). Josh has run sets well into their fifth event multiple times before they completely give up or cord out. In order to get them to last that long, you can’t flat spot them when they are fresh and you have to have reasonably good camber and balance. You also need to flip them on the rim, preferably after every event. Still, that’s a lot of laps for a race tire.

Durability: Dan got a puncture at the last event but I think that’s the only time I remember having an issue. Also, there is a potential issue with the tread seam coming apart. We run the tires in the recommended direction at the first event and then ignore the direction for the rest of the tire’s life. Our team has only had an issue with the seam on one tire when it was new and that came with a serious vibration. Seems to be a pretty tough tire to me.

Endurance: How hard can you push the tire in a session before the grip goes off? The biggest complaint about the 888 was that if you pushed it at all, it would get greasy and grip would vaporize. It was no fun to drive and almost prohibited on track battles. It was horrible for racing. In this respect, I think the RR’s are pretty amazing. You can abuse and over drive these tires and, for the most part, they seem to keep holding their grip. I think abusing these tires hurts their effective life but they hang in there. I think this is a critical parameter to an exciting race tire.

Looking at that stuff, it seems like a great tire. I actually think it is. If someone was handing out fresh tires every race day, I think this would be a spectacular spec race tire. But, tires aren’t being given out and there are a couple of other critical parameters that make these tires not so good for a class that needs to run a set of tires in multiple events to make the budget work. In a class that is supposed to give each competitor equal grip from a spec tire, this tire has more variability than any other performance parameter.


Heat cycling: This is a common term for the performance of the tire falling off after a certain number of track sessions. I see numbers all over the map of how many heat cycles people think these tires are good for. I’ve come to the conclusion that the term “heat cycles” probably isn’t the best terminology for these tires. It’s not that heat cycles don’t apply to these tires, it’s just that heat cycles aren’t all created equal. I think it’s more that the tire is capable of a certain amount of time at temperature. The higher the temperature, the less time you have. The number of effective heat cycles you get depends on how much abuse the tire sees. These tires tolerate over driving pretty well but it comes at the expense of reduced effective performance life.

So why does the performance of the tire drop after use? Tire construction, materials, chemistry, and processing is very complicated and generally considered complete voodoo even by tire engineers. In the past, it’s been said that race tires effectively come as partially cured rubber. Further heating and distortion of the tire finishes up the curing process and the tire becomes harder. There is some thought that Toyo could process the tires differently and deliver them fully cured. In theory, this would lower their initial performance but make them more stable over their life. I’m not sure if that’s true but I sure would like to see it. I believe Toyo’s incentive to do that is low…

Handling: I think this is one of the most fascinating aspects of this tire. I have heard so many times that popping on a fresh set of RR’s will cure all of the car’s handling issues. People love how these tires handle when they are new and hate how they handle when they are all used up. Changing the overall amount of grip can have a small effect on handling balance but it shouldn’t dramatically change the handling.

I believe what is changing is the effective shape of the slip angle graph. The slip angle graph for this tire seems to have a pretty flat and wide peak on fresh RR’s. This wide peak allows good grip over a variety of slip angles and masks subtle balance issues and handling deficiencies. As more time/abuse is put into the tire, not only does the peak grip level dip down a bit, but the peak becomes sharper. This sharp fall off of grip past the peak quits masking issues and requires the driver to sense much more subtle inputs to keep the car near the peak grip level. The car is just flat harder to drive. The drop in performance depends not only on the condition of the tire but also the base handling of the car and the ability of the driver to deal with the sharper peak. If anyone has any further insights to expand or contradict this thought, I’d love to dig into it deeper.


On a practical application of this knowledge, we’ve found driving through a handling imbalance is a bad idea with these tires. One event at Cresson had Dan with a bit of understeer early in the weekend. He thought it was tolerable and didn’t want me to change anything. A couple of sessions later, he had abused the front tires enough that the front tires were signing off and the understeer was now magnified to intolerable levels. We made changes every session that should have made the car an oversteering pig with no success. I didn’t catch a clue to what was happening until we got back to the shop and looked at the differential tire wear front to rear. Now I hammer on balance with Dan early in the weekend and we often end up changing rear springs or sway bars during the event to keep on top of it. When the engine runs, anyway…


Richard P.


Sooooooooo that is a yes, you are volunteering Dan to run the 615s? :confused::confused::confused::confused::D:D but seriously..... Dan?

[liquidroam]

Nvm... that was a waist of my post, just saw the list on the roll call thread

[39PitCrew]

Handling: I think this is one of the most fascinating aspects of this tire. I have heard so many times that popping on a fresh set of RR’s will cure all of the car’s handling issues. People love how these tires handle when they are new and hate how they handle when they are all used up. Changing the overall amount of grip can have a small effect on handling balance but it shouldn’t dramatically change the handling.

I believe what is changing is the effective shape of the slip angle graph. The slip angle graph for this tire seems to have a pretty flat and wide peak on fresh RR’s. This wide peak allows good grip over a variety of slip angles and masks subtle balance issues and handling deficiencies. As more time/abuse is put into the tire, not only does the peak grip level dip down a bit, but the peak becomes sharper. This sharp fall off of grip past the peak quits masking issues and requires the driver to sense much more subtle inputs to keep the car near the peak grip level. The car is just flat harder to drive. The drop in performance depends not only on the condition of the tire but also the base handling of the car and the ability of the driver to deal with the sharper peak. If anyone has any further insights to expand or contradict this thought, I’d love to dig into it deeper.


On a practical application of this knowledge, we’ve found driving through a handling imbalance is a bad idea with these tires. One event at Cresson had Dan with a bit of understeer early in the weekend. He thought it was tolerable and didn’t want me to change anything. A couple of sessions later, he had abused the front tires enough that the front tires were signing off and the understeer was now magnified to intolerable levels. We made changes every session that should have made the car an oversteering pig with no success. I didn’t catch a clue to what was happening until we got back to the shop and looked at the differential tire wear front to rear. Now I hammer on balance with Dan early in the weekend and we often end up changing rear springs or sway bars during the event to keep on top of it. When the engine runs, anyway…


Richard P.

Richard, I'm not any sort of expert on any of this but the mechanic in me thinks what you say makes a lot of sense.
As I've read a couple of the tire threads here, I'm left to wonder about some things.

If I understand the issue: consistent performance over many driving cycles; where "many" is some arbitrary number, say 20.
The secondary issue: amortizing $$$$ spent across the # of driving cycles before the tire tread thickness reaches gone/cords
or the tire becomes substantially uncompetitive or dangerously unpredictable for door-to-door competition.

It seems to me that some of the discussion is adding in a performance component, that is, how "sticky" the tire is during it's usable life.
I think the primary goal of the discussion is two-fold - keep performance fair and keep the consumables budget reasonable.
So the dilemma is: the softer (stickier?) the tire, the faster it wears ($$$) but you get better (lower) lap times. But, a
soft tire also has a much smaller sweet spot related to it's maximum performance over a certain number of driving cycles.
A tire that has a harder compound will wear longer. But the trade off is that maximum acceleration, braking and cornering forces
are reduced by some amount. (And I get it, we're talking about race cars so it's hard to say higher performance is a bad thing.)

So, if the choice is made to use a harder compound tire, does it follow that the car's set up and the driver's racecraft must be better
to achieve the same performance (ie. lower lap times) that comes with a softer compound tire?
And a possible corollary: the more grip a tire has, the more wear/abuse the car's mechanical parts take.
So, more heat/wear in the brakes, diff and trans loads are higher, more heat and higher loads on wheel bearings, more chassis torsional forces, etc., etc. - right?
And based on threads here on the forum and many random discussions at the track over the years - car set up is hard. Well, mechanically
it's easy, dialing it it for optimal track performance is hard. Even NASCAR and F1 teams who have really smart people and spend millions of dollars
to figure that stuff out don't get it right every time.

Thoughts anyone?
Scott

[mach1]

I didn’t even consider the lower wear and tear with a 200tw tire, longer hub and brake life, #winning!

[drecords]

I didn’t even consider the lower wear and tear with a 200tw tire, longer hub and brake life, #winning!

Truth! We'll see how different the laptimes really are

[RichardP]

Tire test setup:

It’s important that if we do a tire test, we pay special attention to a wide variety of parameters to make sure the full package is suitable. We don’t need a different tire, we need a better tire. We also need to agree on the definition of “better” in this context.

First, per the rules, if a race car isn’t on Toyo tires, it isn’t “racing” in CMC (or AI). Without Toyo’s, no CMC season points are accrued, no Toyo bucks are earned. Also, if a legal CMC car is fighting for position with a non-legal CMC car, technically that could be considered out of class racing.

There are a couple of different ways to run this. If you have a non-legal car, you can “fun run” in your normal class. I think a better option is for the tire test folks to run AIX. That keeps things a bit separate and the “winner” of the tire test potentially gets a plastic trophy, some winner stickers, and a season championship! I’m happy to supply AIX stickers to any tire testers for this test. When we had both CMC and CMC2 racing together, I pushed for decals on the windshield and back glass so competitors could easily tell who they were racing for position with and who they weren’t. I think something like that would be good for this.

As I posted earlier, there are a number of relevant parameters we would be testing for. How does the tire feel, how well does it stand to abuse, if you overheat it does it come back after easing up for a lap or is it dead for the rest of the session, etc.??? These are pretty easy to test for in just a few sessions. In my opinion, we can only really tell what we want to about the tire under full race conditions with cars fighting for position.

The much bigger question is how much do the tires degrade with heat cycles? If all of the tire testers start and run the whole weekend on fresh tires, we learn exactly zero on this aspect. Ideally, this test needs to span multiple weekends and possibly multiple sets of tires. In order to figure anything out, we need to have a guy on stickers battling a guy who has at least one full weekend of abuse on his tires. We could have some testers start the weekend on fresh tires and have others wait until Sunday to put the stickers on. Josh is running a Houston DE the first weekend in March and could do his best to wear the test tires out before our race weekend. The more testers the better if we hope to get any real findings.

Getting useful data from a test like this is pretty tough. Initially, we have to figure out what these tires want and get them to work with our cars. What tire pressures do they want? Do they do better or worse with our camber settings? Do they work better with stiffer or softer sprung cars? Slapping on a different style of tire and judging them after a session or two without tuning is very useful. Also, some drivers adapt to changes quicker than others.

The other question is what specific data are we going to be looking at? Certainly lap times are key. Comparison of test tire lap times to Toyo tire lap times is certainly interesting but not really relevant to our test. We need to be looking to differences between tire test competitors. We need to pay special attention to lap time degradation between test subjects, especially those that are on tires with differing heat cycles.

One of the hardest parts of these types of tests is the other variables that are hard to control. Weather, traffic, car setups, etc. are all a big deal but not as significant as the difference between drivers. One example of things we can try to mitigate would be to have competitors swap tires between sessions. Have Josh start the race weekend on heat cycled tires while someone else starts on stickers. After a couple of sessions to set a baseline, have the two swap tires and see the relative change. This could help answer if the difference between cars is the driver or tire wear.

One other thing that would help with testing. The test drivers actually need to race each other. Starting on pole for the invert because you had a problem in the first race and trying to run away with it is something that I might want to do (OK, have done) but it isn’t helpful for our testing. Traffic, cautions, or other situations might lead to some of the test drivers having to wait up for the other testers.

On a personal preference note, I would prefer to suspend any tire testing for the Hallett event. The racing there is too much fun (sacred even) to split up the group. I’d love to see everyone on a fresh set of Toyo’s for this spectacular, multi-region event.

Richard P.

[Al Fernandez]

A couple of additional variables:

What is the tread depth of the test tire as it sits on the shelf and would they be faster if shaved? If indeed there is a compound/design that eliminates drop off due to heat cycles (or Richard's time at heat) then would the tire actually get faster and faster as the weight is shaved off and ultimately being fastest right before it cords? Is it possible we flip to a "thin to win" world where you're buying new tires every weekend, shaving them to 1/32" and hoping to not cord them before the checker?

Why the Azenis? There are at least 10 200utqg rated tires in 255 (which we ran for years) and some are a lot cheaper than the 615+. The Kumho V720 is 140!

[Al Fernandez]

So ok, taking my competitor hat off and putting on my series official hat...
Cars that are not cmc legal can’t score cmc points, so classing cars in six would appear logical. What Will does with such a run group would be his call. I have told Shawn Meze (nasa national competition director) about this discussion so hopefully atwe will get some input from nasa on the situation.

[Sook]

A couple of additional variables:

What is the tread depth of the test tire as it sits on the shelf and would they be faster if shaved? If indeed there is a compound/design that eliminates drop off due to heat cycles (or Richard's time at heat) then would the tire actually get faster and faster as the weight is shaved off and ultimately being fastest right before it cords? Is it possible we flip to a "thin to win" world where you're buying new tires every weekend, shaving them to 1/32" and hoping to not cord them before the checker?

Why the Azenis? There are at least 10 200utqg rated tires in 255 (which we ran for years) and some are a lot cheaper than the 615+. The Kumho V720 is 140!

The azenis have at least some pedigree in other race/track classes. See TT street tire class, and spec Corvette, without shaving (so far).

- Josh

[Supercharged111]

Because this is a science experiment at this point, have you guys considered super sizing and running the 615 in TT or PTX/STX and Toyos in CMC in the same weekend to preserve car counts?

On a side note, will 225 tires fit my Z06 wheels? The desired end state here is reduction in costs, sure would suck if I had to run out and find new wheels.

[mach1]

Because this is a science experiment at this point, have you guys considered super sizing and running the 615 in TT or PTX/STX and Toyos in CMC in the same weekend to preserve car counts?

On a side note, will 225 tires fit my Z06 wheels? The desired end state here is reduction in costs, sure would suck if I had to run out and find new wheels.
Great point on sizing! A 245 is 150 per tire, same od and will fit 17x9.5 without issue, perfect tire!

[Sook]

Great point on sizing! A 245 is 150 per tire, same od and will fit 17x9.5 without issue, perfect tire!

I was looking at 255s, the price difference to the 275 is substantial. I think for the first test we should all be on the same size tire.

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Falken&tireModel=Azenis+RT615K%2B&sidewall=Blackwall&partnum=54WR7RT615KP&tab=Sizes

- Josh

[RichardP]

What is the tread depth of the test tire as it sits on the shelf and would they be faster if shaved?

Definitely one of the advantages of the current RR is no shaving. Shaving adds cost and significantly reduces the places available to purchase. I think a rule that tire shaving isn't allowed would be fine. We already have rules that are hard to police (including using tire treatment on the current tires). In order to cheat the no shaving rule, you would have to buy shaved tires and then run them hard for a while at an event where there aren't any other competitors to see what you are doing. If the tire grip doesn't degrade with use, this would likely be a big hassle and a waste of time.

Of course, the big disadvantage of the current RRs is that they don't work as rain tires. You need an extra set of wheels with a special set of tires (that are probably going to dry rot before you get to use them) to be competitive when the skies open up. The difference between the haves and have-nots is huge in a downpour. You also have the game of guessing what the best tire is when conditions are changing.



I was looking at 255s, the price difference to the 275 is substantial. I think for the first test we should all be on the same size tire.

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Falken&tireModel=Azenis+RT615K%2B&sidewall=Blackwall&partnum=54WR7RT615KP&tab=Sizes

- Josh

255s sound good to me. $600 every two events vs. $1100 every event would be a serious game changer in overall racing costs. Also, your rain tires would just be the next set of fresh tires that you were going to buy and use anyway.


Richard P.

[mach1]

No one has purchased yet, correct? We should totally do 255s, I’m pumped for 2 sets for the price of 1 and last 2-3 times longer.

[RichardP]

No one has purchased yet, correct? We should totally do 255s, I’m pumped for 2 sets for the price of 1 and last 2-3 times longer.

I don't believe anyone has purchased yet but we are rapidly approaching where it's time to shit or get off the pot.

We currently have Dan, Josh, Tyler, and Records. I haven't ever had rain tires before and want some to run DEs. Now that I have a couple sets of extra wheels, I'm in for a set to use as rains. I'll let josh run them for a race.

Josh is planning on running these tires as much as possible at the Driver's Edge event the weekend before. Maybe Records too??? Josh would start the weekend on used tires and compete against stickers. On Sunday morning, Josh would swap to my stickers for qual and the first race. Going from three day old to stickers on the current RRs would make an obvious difference against the rest of the field. Will it with these tires? Josh would then swap back for the 4th race for a back to back comparison.

More driver's on these tires would be better. More people swapping between old and new of this tire would be best. I think we can learn a lot from what we are currently planning.


Richard P.

[Supercharged111]

Because this is a science experiment at this point, have you guys considered super sizing and running the 615 in TT or PTX/STX and Toyos in CMC in the same weekend to preserve car counts?

On a side note, will 225 tires fit my Z06 wheels? The desired end state here is reduction in costs, sure would suck if I had to run out and find new wheels.

I meant 255, but my question was still answered.

[mach1]

The 255’s are a smaller OD and will affect gearing for folks. The load rating is also noticeably higher on the 245’s

[drecords]

Because this is a science experiment at this point, have you guys considered super sizing and running the 615 in TT or PTX/STX and Toyos in CMC in the same weekend to preserve car counts?

On a side note, will 225 tires fit my Z06 wheels? The desired end state here is reduction in costs, sure would suck if I had to run out and find new wheels.

This is what I had originally proposed. TT test on Azenis and class race on Toyo. Then things went off the deep end

[AI#97]

$279.05/Tire this year.

- Josh

Damn! I remember when I as buying RA1's for $175/ea...

[RichardP]

This is what I had originally proposed. TT test on Azenis and class race on Toyo. Then things went off the deep end

Nobody has committed to anything yet. The test group can go that way if they want. I don't think the data is quite as good but it might be sufficient. At least good enough to see if more testing is warranted. Costs more for the test participants but they would get to race with the rest of the group.


Richard P.

[Sook]

Nobody has committed to anything yet. The test group can go that way if they want. I don't think the data is quite as good but it might be sufficient. At least good enough to see if more testing is warranted. Costs more for the test participants but they would get to race with the rest of the group.


Richard P.

I could go either way I suppose. If we're actually racing I think it'll be a better test in the heat of battle.

So the 245/45/17 Azenis is nearly the same OD as the 275/40/17 RRs. The 255/40/17 Azenis is wider than the 245 (obviously), should be better for wear and heat. The 255 Azenis is 0.6" smaller in OD (25.6" OD for the RR, 25" for the 255 Azenis). The price difference for the 255/245 Azenis is less than $1 on tire rack. These tires are in the $150 range - tires at this price would substantially change my ability to show up to races and prepare the car.

255: https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Falken&tireModel=Azenis+RT615K%2B&partnum=54WR7RT615KP&vehicleSearch=false&fromCompare1=yes

245: https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Falken&tireModel=Azenis+RT615K%2B&partnum=445WR7RT615KPXL&vehicleSearch=false&fromCompare1=yes

- Josh

[mach1]

I could go either way I suppose. If we're actually racing I think it'll be a better test in the heat of battle.

So the 245/45/17 Azenis is nearly the same OD as the 275/40/17 RRs. The 255/40/17 Azenis is wider than the 245 (obviously), should be better for wear and heat. The 255 Azenis is 0.6" smaller in OD (25.6" OD for the RR, 25" for the 255 Azenis). The price difference for the 255/245 Azenis is less than $1 on tire rack. These tires are in the $150 range - tires at this price would substantially change my ability to show up to races and prepare the car.

255: https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Falken&tireModel=Azenis+RT615K%2B&partnum=54WR7RT615KP&vehicleSearch=false&fromCompare1=yes

245: https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Falken&tireModel=Azenis+RT615K%2B&partnum=445WR7RT615KPXL&vehicleSearch=false&fromCompare1=yes

- Josh

I think the 245 is the better option and I think it will actually handle the heat better by the load ratings(10%+ higher on the 245).

Should we do a poll? The 255 may run out of gear w/o a RR OD on your trans at some tracks (cota?).

My vote is 245

[RichardP]

I think the 245 is the better option and I think it will actually handle the heat better by the load ratings(10%+ higher on the 245).

Should we do a poll? The 255 may run out of gear w/o a RR OD on your trans at some tracks (cota?).

My vote is 245


According to the Falken tire website, the 245 isn't good for the width of the wheels we run. http://www.falkentire.com/tires/passenger-car-tires/azenis-rt615k-tire

245 = 7.5-9.0"
255 = 8.5-10.0"
275 = 9.0-11.0"

There are a lot of 9.5" wide wheels in the CMC field.

Additionally, right now big black doughnuts are a common and minor form of damage on the sides of our bodywork. At some point, wheel contact would cause more damage to both cars. Not the best money saving option.


Richard P.

[mach1]

In miataland 225's on 15x9 is very common and works quite well, the wider wheel helps the tire work better. I wouldn't worry about that, the donuts on the other hand are an interesting point indeed!

[Rob Liebbe]

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

[RichardP]

The Nitto NT01 is a very good tire with a lower performance capacity but with better lifetime consistency, a lot like the old RA1.


Is it currently, though? I've run the NT01 before. It was fine but I didn't do a detailed comparison of performance from old to new. The bigger question is whether the NT01 you can buy now is the same that you ran before? The RA1 went through at least three iterations while we were running it (I'm guessing more) even though Toyo denied it. The current RR is different than the RR we started on. The common end of life for RR's when we started was a light cording of the outside edge all the way around the tire. It was guaranteed if you didn't flip the tire on the rim after the first event even though the tread seemed to be wearing evenly otherwise. I haven't seen an RR cord like that in a couple of years even when we don't flip them. What else have they changed???


Richard P.

[RichardP]

I think the 245 is the better option and I think it will actually handle the heat better by the load ratings(10%+ higher on the 245).

Should we do a poll? The 255 may run out of gear w/o a RR OD on your trans at some tracks (cota?).

My vote is 245


At this point my vote would be for the 275, mostly to make it easier to get buy in from the rest of the group. It has almost the exact same specs as the current tire on OD, load rating, section width, weight, etc. It would be a direct bolt on and wouldn't require gearing or track width changes. It costs a bit more than the smaller sizes but it's still $300 cheaper than a set of RR's and our testing will show being competitive after two events or we won't go this route.


Richard P.

[ShadowBolt]

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.

Rob Liebbe

This is the reason I bring this tire issue up every year (Daniel beat me to it this year). I hate to lose great racers like Rob due to tire cost. I know others that stopped racing because of tire issues. Some have sold their cars. I always thought of CMC as the class that would let a working man road race. If you have to purchase a new set of tires for every event (and you do if you want to be as fast as possible for every qual and every race) we will lose racers and keep others from joining us in the first place. Look at The Drivers Edge. They sell out every event. If we can make racing in CMC cost near what it cost to run the Drivers Edge our numbers will go up. I think if we can pull off getting a tire that we can run three race weekends (two sets for a regular season) that cost $300.00 less then the RR we could build up to twenty car fields in a few years. I could be wrong but as you can read here tire cost does run people off from CMC road racing.


JJ

[mach1]

We should probably decide by Friday, lots of good points made, does anyone else have thoughts here? IMO the 245 is the perfect combo of OD size vs value vs load rating, 17x9.5 won't be an issue, if the tire doesn't extend past the wheel though it may result in wheel contact vs tire contact. 275 may be good for damage insurance :-/

[Supercharged111]

We should probably decide by Friday, lots of good points made, does anyone else have thoughts here? IMO the 245 is the perfect combo of OD size vs value vs load rating, 17x9.5 won't be an issue, if the tire doesn't extend past the wheel though it may result in wheel contact vs tire contact. 275 may be good for damage insurance :-/

I'm curious to see what tire temps would run on a 245 vs 275 in the middle of summer.

[64GunPilot]

This is the reason I bring this tire issue up every year (Daniel beat me to it this year). I hate to lose great racers like Rob due to tire cost. I know others that stopped racing because of tire issues. Some have sold their cars. I always thought of CMC as the class that would let a working man road race. If you have to purchase a new set of tires for every event (and you do if you want to be as fast as possible for every qual and every race) we will lose racers and keep others from joining us in the first place. Look at The Drivers Edge. They sell out every event. If we can make racing in CMC cost near what it cost to run the Drivers Edge our numbers will go up. I think if we can pull off getting a tire that we can run three race weekends (two sets for a regular season) that cost $300.00 less then the RR we could build up to twenty car fields in a few years. I could be wrong but as you can read here tire cost does run people off from CMC road racing.


JJ

I am just a prospect (sorta like Sons of Anarchy lol). I have loosely followed CMC for several years while I been overseas. I can tell you the tire costs certainly made it hard for me to go the CMC route. I thought hard about spec miata simply because the tires and other consumables probably cost half what it does in CMC. I knew I wanted to road race, and I knew I loved American Thunder V8s, but I'd probably be happy in spec miata too and the costs are less.

As I got more serious and closer to coming back stateside I was still on the fence for about a year trying to decide which way to go. The only reason I pulled the trigger on an built CMC car is because 1. I got a hella good deal on hopefully a great car AND 2. The car came with 5 complete sets of 16" RA1 tires for me to train on. At the current moment, I need some 17" wheel solutions, and I cannot afford a set of RRs even if I spread two sets over 4 events I can't afford that. But I pulled the trigger anyways because in a year from now I hope to be in a little better financial situation to afford to upgrade to 17's and run RRs. But...........

But damn, Im a newbie here, and hearing all this about how the RRs fall off so drastically before they are worn out, thats bullshit. That'll run me in the other direction in a heartbeat!! Years ago it was just the RA1 (which is just as expensive now)......but what happened? How did we end up here with RRs? Did the whole CMC community cast their votes for RRs? Supply problems? Or was NASA and Toyo suck starting this blow torch pushing some agenda?

The fact that a revolt is in the air gives me some peace that maybe by the time I have my competition license next year, as a class, we will have this resolved.

[RichardP]

I knew I loved American Thunder V8s, but I'd probably be happy in spec miata too and the costs are less.

It probably costs less to run a Miata but more to be in the top half of the field in a Miata. They run the same tires we do and replace them just as much or more than we do. It's way cheaper and easier to be a race winner in our class. And we're much cooler to hang out with... :-)




How did we end up here with RRs? Did the whole CMC community cast their votes for RRs? Supply problems? Or was NASA and Toyo suck starting this blow torch pushing some agenda?

Tires for our class are mandated by NASA in conjunction with Toyo and their sponsorship contract. We were on RA1's, then R888 (which went poorly), then back on RA1's and then RR's.

Toyo is a business trying to make money by selling tires. Selling more race tires helps the money part of their racing program. The advertising from the NASA program is supposed to help them sell more street tires. We don't have any information on how the numbers work out. It's completely possible that even with the current setup, the racing side of the house loses money and is considered part of Toyo's advertising budget. Or not???

On the other side, NASA is a business trying to make money. They get money from Toyo for the tire program. From the tire program, NASA gets to entice racers with the promise of big money payouts (in the form of tire coupons) for winning. The more racers that sign up to race, the more money they make. If everyone is happy with the tire situation, it's a big win for NASA. If people aren't happy with the tire situation, people don't sign up. The big question (that's almost impossible to answer even if we had access to the numbers, which we don't) is at what point do the losses from people going away because of tires exceed the net benefit from the money coming in from the tire contract?



The fact that a revolt is in the air gives me some peace that maybe by the time I have my competition license next year, as a class, we will have this resolved.

First, it is pretty unlikely this will be resolved before you get your license. The tire contract is big money (we believe) and is probably signed for multiple years. It will be really challenging to "officially" change the tire rules. Whether we as a local group decide to do something different is maybe another question? On the other hand, there is some hope. Management isn't completely blind to what is going on. Locally, they have instituted a street tire subclass to the TT groups. If that goes well, it will help our cause. TT isn't a spec Toyo class and isn't covered by the big Toyo contract so this was easier to experiment with there.


Also, a bit of perspective is in order. If the tire degradation issue realistically affects your competitiveness within, say, the next two years, you will be considered to be extraordinary. We are all hoping that you are extraordinary cause it's great to have more racers fighting for the pointy end. We will also do whatever help you to get to the pointy end. Even if you don't get there that quickly, we will make sure you have a good time trying. There is really good racing going on even if you aren't on the top of the podium. The amount to learn between where you are now and the pointy end is staggering. Get ready to drink from a fire hose. And have a blast doing it. Don't worry, it's a lot of fun but not addicting. You will be able to stop whenever you want. Probably...


Richard P.

[64GunPilot]

Also, a bit of perspective is in order. If the tire degradation issue realistically affects your competitiveness within, say, the next two years, you will be considered to be extraordinary. We are all hoping that you are extraordinary cause it's great to have more racers fighting for the pointy end. We will also do whatever help you to get to the pointy end. Even if you don't get there that quickly, we will make sure you have a good time trying. There is really good racing going on even if you aren't on the top of the podium. The amount to learn between where you are now and the pointy end is staggering. Get ready to drink from a fire hose. And have a blast doing it. Don't worry, it's a lot of fun but not addicting. You will be able to stop whenever you want. Probably...

I have no illusions of being a podium finisher for a couple years. Looking forward to the mentorship. And thanks for the historical and background info regarding the business end of the tire debacle.

[Sook]

I like the idea of running a 245 tire from a cost perspective. For this test though, I think it makes sense to stick with the 275 to minimize the number of variables at play and give these tires the best chance at success.

My vote is 275 for this test. I'm ready to order.

- Josh

[mach1]

Fair enough I’m good with 275s

[RichardP]

The next big question is whether the testers are racing or TTing as part of the experiment? Signing up for TT would mean purchasing Azenis and Toyos and signing up for racing and supersizing to TT. Sounds expensive. Doing the test as part of racing has its drawbacks but costs less...


Richard P.

[Supercharged111]

The next big question is whether the testers are racing or TTing as part of the experiment? Signing up for TT would mean purchasing Azenis and Toyos and signing up for racing and supersizing to TT. Sounds expensive. Doing the test as part of racing has its drawbacks but costs less...


Richard P.

Could go both ways, supersizing allows them to run both but costs way more (kind of a necessity when you're a guinea pig for a change) which makes it ever more important to capture as much data as possible. It's proof of concept but again more expensive and the data may not be perfect if they end up chasing some POS BMW that won't let them by and heat their tires properly throughout the session. Furthermore (imo) we cannot base jack or shit on an event that happens in the cool of March. I personally believe we need to compare data, cycle for cycle, of the performance of the RR vs the 615 while being run 100% lap for lap to produce any real output for us as racers to even consider defecting from the RR. If I sound like a defender of the RR, well, there are political considerations, but aside from that here in RM the top 3 are not observing the significance of dropoff in times so I personally believe I should pitch this nationally to see where everyone else stands and perhaps all regions should collect lap times vs RR cycles to really get a feel for what's going on and if there is a true need for a change.

[Sook]

I prefer to race, AIX or fun-run. I think we'll get better data in a battle rather than TT.

I'll have at least 8 sessions with data on my Azenis before Cresson, maybe more. If we don't want to race I'll have to think about TTing, and race on year old RRs from Cresson last year! I bet they'll be faster than a fresh set.

- Josh

[Sook]

Here's the best price I found on 275/40-17 Azenis right now. $690 for 4 before tax, screaming deal IMO.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/311851348770

Mine are ordered, Dan's are ordered. I'm looking forward to Cresson!

- Josh

[RichardP]

Mine are ordered, Dan's are ordered.

Mine are ordered so Josh will have stickers to run with on Sunday morning...


Richard P.

[Al Fernandez]

I think it'd be worth some time to develop an actual test protocol. The goal is to validate number of sessions before grip degradation. That to me would best be done by having a pair of highly consistent drivers doing back to back runs on brand new unshaved tires, brand new 2/32s tires, and something like 8 and 12 heat cycle tires that started life unshaved. Obviously the driver should not be allowed to know which set they are driving on.


We used a back to back in one session test like that to validate the grip impact of 225s back in the day when we were trying to figure out how to slow down the S197s.

[BryanL]

That to me would best be done by having a pair of highly consistent drivers .

I talked with Jerry and we are willing to help out the group and be the test drivers.

Some of this is funny to me as how involved the test has to be. Funny because in my mind I want to think we did a huge (sarcasm) tire test during the 888 debacle I think with Proctor doing back to back sessions on different tires and then the determination was made. Seems similar to the way I remember some rules being changed based upon one race at ECR with data only comparing two cars. Yet now we have to have a Nascar level tire test?

[Al Fernandez]

We don't have to...we could just shoot from the hip.

[drecords]

I think it'd be worth some time to develop an actual test protocol. The goal is to validate number of sessions before grip degradation. That to me would best be done by having a pair of highly consistent drivers doing back to back runs on brand new unshaved tires, brand new 2/32s tires, and something like 8 and 12 heat cycle tires that started life unshaved. Obviously the driver should not be allowed to know which set they are driving on.


We used a back to back in one session test like that to validate the grip impact of 225s back in the day when we were trying to figure out how to slow down the S197s.

We can actually make this happen.

As far as I know, Josh is running in a set of sticker RT615K+ at MSRH this weekend and will have those with him at MSRC. I'm bringing a set of sticker RT615K+ to MSRC with me and plan to use them for a portion of the friday test and saturday warm-up and TT sessions.

We could make Josh put on a blindfold and 'change' his tires friday and have him go run a session, then come back and we'll 'change' his tires again and not tell him what we're putting on. IE -- may not have put stickers on etc. Would be close to a blind eval and I think he is consistent enough to make it a reasonably successful test and it won't be his first session ever on those tires.

Also -- in line with my original proposal, I will run them in friday practice (4 sessions-ish), saturday warmup, sunday warmup, and then maybe we'll do an AIX Race 4 Sunday for the street tire cars to evaluate how the tires 'race' to be sensitive to the other potential issues that are out there.

[Al Fernandez]

Personally I would think we'd want to spend a bit of time simply driving on these (and building heat cycles) and optimizing setup before thinking we're ready for a test. I would be surprised if we did not find that they require different alignment, pressures, and spring/damper settings to work well.

[Sook]

Lots of discussion going on, glad to see that. Ideas are all over the map, at least we're having the talk!

The weather this weekend isn't looking great, so I'll at least get to text azenis as rain tires :)

Got em mounted, I'm wondering if they'll rub more than the RRs.

1872

- Josh

[mach1]

Lots of discussion going on, glad to see that. Ideas are all over the map, at least we're having the talk!

The weather this weekend isn't looking great, so I'll at least get to text azenis as rain tires :)

Got em mounted, I'm wondering if they'll rub more than the RRs.

1872

- Josh

Tires look good!!

[64GunPilot]

People talk about the R888 debacle. What went wrong there? 615's vs R888 vs R888r? Prices are about the same on Tirerack. Curious to know why everyone dislikes the R888?

[RichardP]

People talk about the R888 debacle. What went wrong there? 615's vs R888 vs R888r? Prices are about the same on Tirerack. Curious to know why everyone dislikes the R888?

The R888 when we were running it got greasy if you pushed it too hard. It wasn't fun to drive or race. It was said that it needed a more sophisticated driver to extract it's full performance. The AI/CMC group gave a big middle finger to that...

I would guess the compound has been revised since then, especially in the newer R888R???


Richard P.

[RichardP]

brand new unshaved tires, brand new 2/32s tires

I'm not planning doing any tests with shaved tires. Just write the rule to not allow shaving. If it's possible to gain a performance advantage by paying extra to turn the tires into one weekend or one day tires by shaving them, then there is no point in switching tires.

If someone else wants to spend the money on shaved tires to test, I would be interested in the data. But, that same money spent to add to the sample size of the regular tire test would be much more useful.


Richard P.

[ShadowBolt]

What is the tread depth of the tire Josh and Dan are going to test?

Jerry

[RichardP]

Got em mounted

- Josh

I've gotten mine mounted also. It's getting a bit out of hand. I have four vehicles and a trailer, all sitting on their tires and this stack is still left over. There is something wrong with us...


Richard P.

[RichardP]

What is the tread depth of the tire Josh and Dan are going to test?

Jerry

I haven't measured them yet. Starting at full tread. Measuring will certainly be part of the testing. Also part of the test is to see if they can handle full abuse at full tread depth without chunking. Most street tires can't but these have very large tread blocks and I haven't heard of people having problems with them even though most people are using them as track tires.


Richard P.

[RichardP]

We can actually make this happen.

As far as I know, Josh is running in a set of sticker RT615K+ at MSRH this weekend and will have those with him at MSRC. I'm bringing a set of sticker RT615K+ to MSRC with me and plan to use them for a portion of the friday test and saturday warm-up and TT sessions.

We could make Josh put on a blindfold and 'change' his tires friday and have him go run a session, then come back and we'll 'change' his tires again and not tell him what we're putting on. IE -- may not have put stickers on etc. Would be close to a blind eval and I think he is consistent enough to make it a reasonably successful test and it won't be his first session ever on those tires.

Also -- in line with my original proposal, I will run them in friday practice (4 sessions-ish), saturday warmup, sunday warmup, and then maybe we'll do an AIX Race 4 Sunday for the street tire cars to evaluate how the tires 'race' to be sensitive to the other potential issues that are out there.

Since we don't appear to be doing a full tire test at Cresson, Josh had to buy a set of Toyo's to race on. That, combined with the test tires, fixing his brakes from the last race, and the general costs of running events in back to back weekends has Josh running a bit thin. Last I heard he wasn't planning to do the Friday test day or TT sessions.


Richard P.

[RichardP]

Personally I would think we'd want to spend a bit of time simply driving on these (and building heat cycles) and optimizing setup before thinking we're ready for a test. I would be surprised if we did not find that they require different alignment, pressures, and spring/damper settings to work well.

All that setup work (specific to Josh's car, anyway) is planned for this weekend. That's assuming the weather plays nice. The forecast is all over the map and changing every time I look. If the weather holds out, we will have a full weekend of setup and heat cycles on his tires with the stickers still on mine. If the skies open up, Josh's won't have as many effective cycles on them and mine won't be stickers anymore...


Richard P.

[michaelmosty]

Where has anyone been able to buy a set of RR’s from? I haven’t bought a set since middle of last year and can’t find anyone that has any in stock to ship to a residence.

[Supercharged111]

I got mine from Phil's Tire late last year, but they were already a year old. Maybe they only make them every other year.

[mach1]

Where has anyone been able to buy a set of RR’s from? I haven’t bought a set since middle of last year and can’t find anyone that has any in stock to ship to a residence.

Did you try simple tire?

[Sook]

Where has anyone been able to buy a set of RR’s from? I haven’t bought a set since middle of last year and can’t find anyone that has any in stock to ship to a residence.

Supply low, demand high - I'll sell you my set for $2k delivered to the track! :p

Just kidding of course, it's actually $5k.

Jkjk,
- Josh

[drecords]

Where has anyone been able to buy a set of RR’s from? I haven’t bought a set since middle of last year and can’t find anyone that has any in stock to ship to a residence.

Since I also bought Azenis I got a set of second hand new stickers from Matt White for a discount. Have you called tirerack to see what they can do? They've been great to me over the years.

[Al Fernandez]

According to Falken they are molded to 8/32nds, the same as the RA1s. Back when we ran them, all the fast guys shaved them. I'm not sure its realistic to police tread depth, but certainly open to suggestions.

[drecords]

Mine are mounted and full tread depth. Will be running them Friday all day on my car to see if I can do something to hurt them. I'm on the fence about running TT, it gets more heat cycles quicker but with Josh doing the test last weekend and me running them in practice Friday idk what additional data we want to gather from TT sessions on them. If somebody thinks we can get data from me in TT I'm happy to add it at the track.

[RichardP]

According to Falken they are molded to 8/32nds, the same as the RA1s. Back when we ran them, all the fast guys shaved them. I'm not sure its realistic to police tread depth, but certainly open to suggestions.

Well, we wouldn't be policing tread depth. The whole point of this exercise is to find a tire that we can run down to no tread while still being competitive. We would be trying to police shaving. A shaved tire has a very distinctive surface. That surface goes away with track use but it takes a bit to completely go away. That use would have to happen at an event away from a race event. I think a burnout could get rid of about 80% of the shaving marks but wouldn't get them all.

So, it's not that a shaving rule couldn't be cheated. It would just be a big hassle. I think anyone going to that much trouble to cheat is already cheating in ways that aren't going to be found by the level of tech that we are currently doing...


Richard P.

[39PitCrew]

Well, we wouldn't be policing tread depth. The whole point of this exercise is to find a tire that we can run down to no tread while still being competitive. We would be trying to police shaving. A shaved tire has a very distinctive surface. That surface goes away with track use but it takes a bit to completely go away. That use would have to happen at an event away from a race event. I think a burnout could get rid of about 80% of the shaving marks but wouldn't get them all.

So, it's not that a shaving rule couldn't be cheated. It would just be a big hassle. I think anyone going to that much trouble to cheat is already cheating in ways that aren't going to be found by the level of tech that we are currently doing...


Richard P.

And really, if the tire testing finds a tire that is decently competitive from stickers to cords, tread depth and shaving become much less interesting.
Or at least incentive to shave a tire and the work to hide it if it's not legal to do so drops quite a bit.

[AI#97]

And really, if the tire testing finds a tire that is decently competitive from stickers to cords, tread depth and shaving become much less interesting.
Or at least incentive to shave a tire and the work to hide it if it's not legal to do so drops quite a bit.

NT01...have many that are date coded 2011 and still plan on using them till cords show. Been trying to kill them for several years.

[mach1]

I learned a bunch in SM at Cresson, 15hc toyos were also as fast as stickers this past event for me.
I am going to Hallett in 2 weeks with SCCA, the Hoosiers are only supposed to be good for 4-5hc.

The SM guys were saying toyos are fast up to 15-20 at msrc and Hallett but you have to sticker up at COTA

[BryanL]

Below is some information from Terry Fair who started the 200TW class within TT. I was unable to copy the pictures he sent as well but I can email it to anyone.

Terry,

Just curious how I could tell who in TT is running in the 200 TW class? Over in CMC land a few experimented with the Falken Azenis 615 with some good success. The people who win the contingencies are against it and make the case that it's pointless if it isn't a Toyo and backed by the home office.
To be on podium you have to spend $1,250 every event just on Toyo RR's which is much different than when I started. The RR just falls off too quickly.

Great move doing the 200 TW class and I hope it makes the class grow which I'm curious as we are looking for ways to grow our class and the tire costs I think is a big hurdle.

Bryan Leinart

Excellent questions and observations. We have railed against Toyo tires for ages. They seem to buy their way into too many specs/series, but their tires just aren't that good. The performance:wear:cost ratios just seem out of wack. And the Toyo Bucks contingencies for AI/CMC seem pretty stingy...

It is even less fun paying $1900/set for giant Hoosier A7s that last maybe a day or two of gentle, 1 lap sessions in Time Trial. That's what we were doing from 2012-15 and again in 2018 (we ran an R7 from 2015-17 in two TT-Letter classed cars, which lasted a LOT longer). The "tire wars" got a bit out of hand and late last year I decided to do something about it, at least here.

Between the SCCA Time Trial (which is 99% 200TW tires) and Optima series events (100% 200TW) we also run, we have been seeing their groups GROW while the Time Trial groups stuck in the Hoosier wars seemed to stagnate. I've talked to dozens of people in Texas who have stepped away from the "purple crack", and the wear vs performance vs cost of the 200TW tires is too hard to ignore.

With so many competitive options to choose from (Bridgestone, Continental, Hankook, BFG, Falken, Yokohama and more) we are in sort of a golden age of performance "street tires".

Last weekend we ran Bridgestone RE-71R tires on both Saturday and Sunday in TT3 class. At 3925 lbs with driver on 305mm tires I managed a 1:20.3 best. It was good enough for 2nd in class, only a half second back, and with proper aero we think we can match or beat the Hoosier boys on street tires.

I ran one session on 315/30/18 Hoosier R7s and was only 1.1 seconds faster at 1:19.2 lap. That would have won the class, of course, but the wear rate is much higher.

We ran one set of RE-71Rs last season on this car for 9 weekends, competitively, setting our best ever lap on the MCS 1.7 CCW on the 8th weekend. They still have tread left. I ran a set of 315mm A7s and they lasted a day and a half before cording...

We are all just fighting for trophies, as the tire contingencies are pretty light for everyone. For this season we are offering trophies for 200TW cars for NASA Texas Time Trial, but we hope to continue to grow the idea of using a more sensible tire in other competitions within NASA. We're happy with the growth we have seen already and many former TT competitors have come back, now that their tires can last 5-6 times longer for less cost. You can read more about the 200TW TT series we helped create here. http://www.vorshlag.com/blog/?p=1490

[AI#97]

You guys should contact Louis at Gspeed about these tires he has been running on his WRL corvettes. They are DAMN sticky and DAMN fast and last 8 hours with ease even with the varied driving styles of "rent a vette" racers who constantly brake stuff.

Don't laugh at the chinese tahrs....they are pretty damn good. I think Louis brought in an entire container of them. Just have to figure out which size to order since most of his are the 265/18. http://nankangusa.com/passenger-tires/ns2r/ These tires make the Azenis 615+, Rival and RE71 seem like hockey pucks and yet they still last fairly well for the weekend. I want to say they were $175/tire but could be wrong.

EDIT:

simple tire for 255/17's... $142/ea. https://simpletire.com/nankang-255-40r17-24885005-tires?stmodel=ns-2r&stcategory=summer&sttype=passenger&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz8CRjf2y4QIVQp7ACh1bRQMVEAQYAiAB EgI1XfD_BwE

[liquidroam]

Sooooo.... our of curiosity. Where are we at this. Unfortunately I did not get to spend a lot of time chatting with people at Cresson about the situation.

[marshall_mosty]

You guys should contact Louis at Gspeed about these tires he has been running on his WRL corvettes. They are DAMN sticky and DAMN fast and last 8 hours with ease even with the varied driving styles of "rent a vette" racers who constantly brake stuff.

Don't laugh at the chinese tahrs....they are pretty damn good. I think Louis brought in an entire container of them. Just have to figure out which size to order since most of his are the 265/18. http://nankangusa.com/passenger-tires/ns2r/ These tires make the Azenis 615+, Rival and RE71 seem like hockey pucks and yet they still last fairly well for the weekend. I want to say they were $175/tire but could be wrong.

EDIT:

simple tire for 255/17's... $142/ea. https://simpletire.com/nankang-255-40r17-24885005-tires?stmodel=ns-2r&stcategory=summer&sttype=passenger&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz8CRjf2y4QIVQp7ACh1bRQMVEAQYAiAB EgI1XfD_BwE


Unfortunately the 275/40 is only available in an 18"...
The closest they have for a 17 is a 255/40...

http://nankangusa.com/passenger-tires/ns2r/

[Pranav]

It's made in a Chinese factory

All they have to do is wake Wang up and he'll have a batch made and loaded on a ship by Monday

[centerville]

Unfortunately the 275/40 is only available in an 18"...
The closest they have for a 17 is a 255/40...

http://nankangusa.com/passenger-tires/ns2r/

Devils advocate here: Why not go to 255's, they are even less expensive? It has nothing to do with the fact that I have 5 sets of 17x9 wheels.

[ShadowBolt]

I'm kind of shocked that no one cares about the e-mail Terry sent Bryan. I think Terry has hit the tire issue squarely on the head.


JJ

[RichardP]

I'm kind of shocked that no one cares about the e-mail Terry sent Bryan. I think Terry has hit the tire issue squarely on the head.


JJ

I think a lot of people care and agree with Terry. That's why we are doing the experimental tire thing...


Richard P.

[BryanL]

https://www.windingroad.com/articles/blogs/speed-secrets-jeff-braun-on-tires/?utm_source=Winding+Road+Weekly+Email+List&utm_campaign=97c53c21f1-WR_Racing_News_10_10_2018_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f40212f51a-97c53c21f1-58089893&mc_cid=97c53c21f1&mc_eid=4e618c612d

-There is no substitute for high-grip, new tires. You will get beaten by a driver who can afford to run new tires each race, assuming they follow #1 above.

-People so often try to set up a car on worn-out tires and fool themselves into thinking they learned something, when in fact they “learned” something that’s wrong. Now instead of just not knowing the answer, they “know” the wrong answer. That’s MUCH worse.

-Heat cycles affect a tire more if that tire is closer to an out-and-out racing tire. People worry about heat cycles on a tire that’s good for 20,000 miles on the street car...that’s not important. However, on a high-performance race tire that’s good for 150 miles, one heat cycle will cost you a lot of grip.

[AI#97]

I think a lot of people care and agree with Terry. That's why we are doing the experimental tire thing...


Richard P.

I would not take everything Terry comes up with as gospel. Remember, nearly all his cars are 2 or 3 lap wonders or for autoX...not great data transfer over to 30-45 minute hard sessions going wheel to wheel in cars without ABS. Keep that in mind and read between his data.....just sayin. Also, most of his customers are riding on $3500-7000 sets of good shocks...um, ya'll aren't. That alone will effect tire data almost as much as driving style.