gracer7-rx7

iTrader: (16)

Found this info on another forum:





Street Tire Shootout by Sportscar official SCCA publication
Has anyone seen the recent (October 09) Sports Car magazine, titled Ultimate Street Fighter. Just got it today. There is some conflicting info in regards to the GRM issues. I figure they are based on differing surfaces, the fact that RWD was used vs. FWD, and maybe vehicle weights. GRM used a Honda Civic (ST) while Sports Car used a Mazda RX-8 (STX). The 265/35-18 tires were shaved to 3/32 mounted on 18x9 wheels. The course was Adams Motorsport Park in Riverside, CA, it was set-up to be comparable to a typical Solo course. The article does not call one tire the winner, but says they were after the tire with the fastest lap times, not the highest G's.

Here are the tires test from slowest to fastest:

7. Toyo Proxes R1R- Best Lap: 48.0
6. Kumho Ecsta XS- Best Lap: 47.4
5. Nitto NT05- Best Lap: 47.0
4. Yokohama AD08- Best Lap: 46.8
3. Hankook R-S3- Best Lap: 46.4
2. Bridgestone RE-11- Best Lap: 46.2
1. Dunlop Direzza Star Spec- Best Lap: 46.1

Oh, the GRM article had tested the Kumho XS as the fastest tire in their shoot out. I think that the Nitto NT05 do not even come in MINI friendly sizes. And these test do not factor in wet conditions, noise, nor tread wear, only fastest lap times.

gracer7-rx7

iTrader: (16)

I haven't read the actual article so don't know details of the testing but here is a counterpoint from someone that did read the article:



I bet if you got a third publication you'd get a third set of results.

A few issues I had with the Sportscar tests - they spread testing over three days which would seem to mean more variance in conditions, not less. (They said it was "about 75" the whole time ) I preferred GRM's where they re-tested the first tires to see how much improvement there was because of conditions / familiarity with course. Instead, Sportscar kept running the initial fast tire (RS3) for three days.. I also wonder how they figured out tire pressures, because a lot of dismissals were because of "heat sensitivity." Totally off-base pressures could go a long way towards overheating a tire. And with their test car being just under 2800lbs, and half the tires struggled with that weight?? Seems kinda odd, that's hardly portly in the real world. They were also using data acquisition but didn't share any of the data. I'd much rather have had access to that info than raw times on some random course I'll never run.

gracer7-rx7

iTrader: (16)

Here is a test done by Tire Rack:

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/...&AID=10398365&

Brent Dalton

iTrader: (31)

I read the article the other day and was happy to see that the starspecs ran the fastest lap. I'm sure all the tires have certain areas where they work better than others. I've had my starspecs on for quite some at the track now and it's still holding it's grip and I'm honestly shocked at the amount of tread it still has. I was going to switch back to R Compounds after I finally wore these out, but I finally gave up on wearing them out and switch my wheels out... most of the time running the starspecs on Saturday, and the Kumho V710's on Sunday.

gracer7-rx7

iTrader: (16)

^ you will probably heat cycle them to death before they loose tread.
that's what happened my old Kumho MXs. 12 track days, still plenty of tread, but no grip.

I don't autox competitively so for me the numbers are almost meaningless but it is interesting to see that tires are reasonably close overall depending on surface quality and car used.

I look for a tire that communicates well (most important aspect to me), has good grip and stays consistent for 30 minute HPDE sessions and is streetable. I've been happy with my current Star Specs and my previous Kumho MX tires.