Hi,

I just want to know what everyone thinks about tire size on a widebodied car. From this thread

https://www.rx7club.com/race-car-tech-103/fd-race-suspension-discussion-737464/page2/

it was mentioned that tire width/grip isn't everything. Then I am interested in knowing how to save money from expensive tires but still having similar or better performance. Can anyone chime in?

 

If you've bothered to go widebody, get the 285's. It is true that after a certain point there may be a diminishing return to going wider, but I don't think 255 is that point.

 

What's better depends on a lot of things, to know for sure you'd have to test, but 285's are probably better, especially if you've got a whole lot of power. Unless you're competing it's pretty much irrelevant though, either one can be fast, just go for what works best for you. 285's will be better able to put power down for sure.

Especially with the time attack guys in Japan, they'll be using very sticky tires that last less than a day, so they'll be getting lots of grip from their 255's, and to match that with some decent longevity then 285's will be necessary.

 

Well, I won't really be in any competitions, just a lapping day car, maybe some TA's for fun. I don't have any experience with going to wider tires, so I dunno how much more grip 30mm would provide. I went from street tires to some R-comps last year and the grip was night and day.

Something else I noticed was that most of the awd cars in Japan use 265. Somehow this doesn't make sense, with awd they should be able to put the power down better than rwd cars like the FD, but yet they need slightly wider tires. Sometimes I feel like Japan has everything backwards.