What I've read totally contradicts what I want, but I'm willing to sacrifice some money, depending on some other constituents.

Tire Size: 235/45/17
Conditions: Dry. (It rained a total of 5 days this past year. Drove 1)
Where: Combined Highway/City
Driving Style: Spirited


Wants: R-Compounds: toyo R888 or Nitto NT01.

I'd like to go with R-compounds for the traction, because I do Auto-X the car about twice a year, but unfortunately these are the only rims I have, so no swapping. Most of the time the car sees highway/city driving which is usually 3-4 days a week. My concern is mileage. How much mileage have you guys got from either of these tires? Does anyone have tread-ware ratings? I must be blind.

I'm hoping for around 15k, and even that I'd only like to replace the rears.
If this sounds unfeasible which “street tires” do you recommend?

street tires:
Falken Azenis RT-615
Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3

 

NO WAY will you get 15k outta either of those r-comps.

You MIGHT get that far on the Azenis. Those are going to be a bit stickier than the Goodyears. The general rule of thumb seems to be that the Azenis lasts about a season, including travel to events. I have maybe 3k miles on the Azenis and about 8-10 events on them and they are about 1/2 way gone.

I've read good things about the GSD3, but don't have any personal experience with them.

 

If all you do is autox twice a year, get street tires. Lots of people autocrossing on the new Bridgestones and Dunlops, Kumho MX, Goodyears etc

 

you would hate r compounds on the street. you wouldn't even get them heated up. and depending on which r-comp, you would probably have worse traction than a street tire.

 

Either the GS-D3 or azenis. Get the goodyear if you need wet traction and longer life. Get the Falken if you want more dry grip.

Dave

 

cool, thanks for the replies guys. I figured the R-Comps might be more than what I needed.

 

I daily drove and auto x'ed twice a month for last couple of years on DOT R tires.

I ran Toyo RA1 (same compound as R888) and got ~10,000 miles of LEGAL wear and another 4 to 5,000 miles of driving until the tires were done.

So with a tame alignment and only a couple races a year you should be able to do a lot better than I did. Probably in the 10 to 20,000 mile range.

The RA1 warm up with NORMAL driving and are only off when the pavement is colder than ~20deg F.

They always have more grip than max performance street tires, it is just the trransition from super hero grip to good street tire grip when they get cold is a big drop in traction that CAN get you into trouble.

The RA1 also has the most consistent traction over its life compared to any other DOT R tire and does not cycle out even in a year of daily driving as other DOT Rs will.

 

^ he said twice a year not month.

if you autox twice a month, then thats a different story.

 

I'd strongly suggest a good high performance street tire. Check out the reviews on the Tire Rack and pick a tire that has good dry performance. Once you find tires that you like, then pick one that is available in the size that you want.

If you are going to auto-x a couple times a year, it won't be your tires that will be a limiting factor. I'm by far the slowest thing about my car when I auto-x.

 

hays, buy my uim so I can try some r-comps. haha
I think I'm going to try the RT-615 since I'm getting a crazy crack deal price on them.

 

I think this is a good decision for what you do. Driving race tires (those DOT R compound tires ARE full blown race tires) on the street is just not a good idea.

This is what i learned about driving race tires on the street first hand.

Race tires puncture easily! On the way home from getting them mounted, i noticed one of the tires wasn't holding air very well. Turns out, there was an ENTIRE butter knife that went though and into the tire...

Race tires loose air quicker. Tires are made of many layers of different types of rubber, one of these layers has very low air permeability. It seems race tires just lack this!

You car gets sand blasted. The soft compound of race tires likes to take whatever is on the road and put it on your fenders.

The tires dry out quickly. It seems that driving race tires on the street just dries them out faster. Even though they dont get to racing temp on the street, maybe they get just hot enough to use their limited heat cycles.

Slippery! Most of the time the tires are very grippy, but there is times when you will find that you have very limited traction. The Hoosiers i ran are the slicks with only 2 grooves down them. They don't work good with grime and dirt on the road. And you really don't want to find those dirty spots on an off-ramp. Also, they dont do good on colder days.

 

The Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3 is no longer Goodyear's top performing street tire.
The new top of the pecking order is the Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymetric. Check out its performance stats at the Tire Rack website. They're outstanding.

Some of these Maximum Performance Summer tires rival the R-compounds in the numbers they can generate. Also good and worth checking out are the Yokohama ADVAN Neova AD07 and the Bridgestone Potenza RE-01R.
But if I had to buy one tire to meet the needs you've outlined it would be the Eagle F1 Asymetric.

 

So, the resolution to the story was......... R888's

 

If you only auto-x twice a year, I really doubt that R-comp tires will be very beneficial to you. Only if you were a season trophy contender (meaning attending at least 50% of the events) would I suggest R-compound tires. Street tires grip pretty well, and most of all, are much more forgiving when you push them their max grip levels. R compounds will give no warning and bite you in the ***.

I'm into my second autocross season with my fc, and I can see no benefit to switching to R compounds, even in a street prepared class. I'm simply not fast enough to take full advantage of it, and I would also like to facilitate the learning process with street tires.

 

I wouldn't necessarily jump to that conclusion. The F1 Asymmetric wasn't compared directly to the GS-D3, and it has a different tread design. If I had to guess, I'd say they have similar compounds and the F1 GS-D3 has better wet performance while giving up a tiny bit of dry grip. In any case, both are at the top of Goodyear's street tire class.

To the OP, I think you'll like those a lot. R-compounds tend to be less forgiving when they're run without grooves, because beginning drivers do use the squeal of a treaded tire as input. Better drivers don't need that. The R888 is a relatively streetable R-comp, and in climates like yours it's not that big of a stretch to do what you're doing.

Dave