Road tyre options for track?

[andyiley]

Sorry oilshange, you are wrong, I drive a 328 & am regularly overtaking/keeping up with theoretically SIGNIFICANTLY better cars at Cadwell/Blyton (my most frequent trackdays) and whilst when I tried R888s I was faster per lap the difference in cost is a no-brainer.

I normally do 30/40 mins on track to 20/30 mins off track, and definitely push it.

[NJH]

andyiley said:

SonicShadow said:

Road tyres like the SportContact will hold up OK on a wet track day, but you'll kill them quite easily on a dry one - they'll just overheat especially on a heavier car.

They last pretty well on my e36 328 in both wet & dry over the last 2 years with well over 1/2 tread left & around a dozen dry & 2 wet days under their belt.

Probably the hardest wearing 1B tyre I know of with good grip is the Dunlop DZ03g, I used to see the 1120kg 944 that Pete Morris/Alex Eacock raced in CSCC fairly regularly. They would get about 4 race weekends tops out of those tyres often seemed the front left was only managing 3. Thats less than 4 hours of running which if one can push the car hard enough is 2 track days. I was slow and would get about twice that wear so a maximum of around 8 hours running which a good track driver should get through in 4 track days no bother. 4 days seems to be a fair number for quite a few faster drivers on track days.

To get 14 track days out of any tyre with not even half wear is unreal, that could easily be more than 2000 miles of driving.

[Oilchange]

Fair enough, I'm a big fan of keeping costs on tyres down and am always looking for bargains on Ebay.
I don't think I made my point very well though, apologies.

andyiley said:

Sorry oilshange, you are wrong, I drive a 328 & am regularly overtaking/keeping up with theoretically SIGNIFICANTLY better cars at Cadwell/Blyton (my most frequent trackdays) and whilst when I tried R888s I was faster per lap the difference in cost is a no-brainer.

I normally do 30/40 mins on track to 20/30 mins off track, and definitely push it.

[andyiley]

Thanks, but you don't need to apologise, no offence implied by you or taken on my part.

[andyiley]

NJH said:

andyiley said:

SonicShadow said:

Road tyres like the SportContact will hold up OK on a wet track day, but you'll kill them quite easily on a dry one - they'll just overheat especially on a heavier car.

They last pretty well on my e36 328 in both wet & dry over the last 2 years with well over 1/2 tread left & around a dozen dry & 2 wet days under their belt.

Probably the hardest wearing 1B tyre I know of with good grip is the Dunlop DZ03g, I used to see the 1120kg 944 that Pete Morris/Alex Eacock raced in CSCC fairly regularly. They would get about 4 race weekends tops out of those tyres often seemed the front left was only managing 3. Thats less than 4 hours of running which if one can push the car hard enough is 2 track days. I was slow and would get about twice that wear so a maximum of around 8 hours running which a good track driver should get through in 4 track days no bother. 4 days seems to be a fair number for quite a few faster drivers on track days.

To get 14 track days out of any tyre with not even half wear is unreal, that could easily be more than 2000 miles of driving.

Yes, but surely 2k miles to junk a tyre is pretty extreme for a road car/tyre combo?

Whilst I have done lots to the car to make track manners much better, I will be pulling nothing like the G that a race car would be, and also you are (pretty much) only wearing the tyres when you are slipping, so my well set up road car should be significantly better than the car/tyre combo you mention?

I think?

[NJH]

Honestly Andy I don't know as you are in a unique place. I ran Continentals on my old SAAB 9-5 a few years back and only got 6k miles out of them from normal road driving. On the 968 I had Yokohama AVS, really liked those tyres a lot (came from Boxsey funnily enough) but they only lasted about 4.5k purely road miles many of those driven by my wife. As you're tyres wear down they usually tend to wear less so with only half tread and 2k miles you're well on course to get more miles on track out of those tyres than we managed from pure road driving in a 968 shod with Yokohamas. I think their AD08 is probably the perfect answer to this question for those who can't get the other new tyres in their sizes, the Yokos tend to have mega stiff sidewalls so cars like our old 968 on stock suspension was much sharper and solid in the handling department and this in turn got more out of the tyres. I am big fan of Yokos.

[b16a2_VTi]

I've got a few sets on different wheels.

AD08
A048
V70

All are good, id say the A048 and V70 are very similar on track performance but the AD08 are a good all rounder.

[boxsey]

NJH said:

Honestly Andy I don't know as you are in a unique place. I ran Continentals on my old SAAB 9-5 a few years back and only got 6k miles out of them from normal road driving. On the 968 I had Yokohama AVS, really liked those tyres a lot (came from Boxsey funnily enough) but they only lasted about 4.5k purely road miles many of those driven by my wife. As you're tyres wear down they usually tend to wear less so with only half tread and 2k miles you're well on course to get more miles on track out of those tyres than we managed from pure road driving in a 968 shod with Yokohamas. I think their AD08 is probably the perfect answer to this question for those who can't get the other new tyres in their sizes, the Yokos tend to have mega stiff sidewalls so cars like our old 968 on stock suspension was much sharper and solid in the handling department and this in turn got more out of the tyres. I am big fan of Yokos.

He he...I remember those wheels and tyres. Hope you're well mate.

Those tyres were great in the wet. Helped a lot by them being 16s and narrower I think.

[Pebbles167]

AD08's were the tyre of choice by racers in the Castle Combe Saloon Car Championship. The new R puts the tyre in a different list so they no longer use them, but they are pretty much the same and shift water just as well.

[NJH]

Looks great Boxsey mate. I thought they would look great on my blue car but just looked a bit odd so they went straight into a refurb to anthracite. Took me 3 sets of those wheels to get the 6x 16x8 cup rims. The 7" wide fronts all went to another member of PCGB who has them on her old Audi for the RS2 sort of look.

100 quid a piece mate for the AD08s from here:
http://www.oponeo.co.uk/tyre-details/yokohama-neov...

I guess they must be old stock though as I thought they stopped making the 08 awhile back to replace with the 08R.

[rallycross]

Castle Combe in the damp or wet is horrible, slipy slimey greasy track won't make any difference what tyres you are using!
888's are fine in the damp up until the point it gets really wet and you have standing water then you need a road tyre.

[theboyfold]

I don't think you are trying hard enough to get your tyres to the track



Seriously though, I use the AD08R on my track E36 328i and it's very good in the dry, good in the damp and as good as you can expect in the very wet, although they did let go at Coombe in June

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWded6xjNp0

Standing water everywhere, but it's not as bad as I image a more track focused tyre would be.

[git-r]

- about the AD08R's - at a recent sprint in extremely wet conditions they put in times that were massively quicker than any of the cars in my class and beat a lot of much quicker cars. In the dry however, the 3 cars in my class were all within 3 tenths of a second on a 1:14 track. The other cars were running Nankang NS2R and Federal RS-R's. The AD08r's won by 100th of a second with considerably less power.

Can't say I was that impressed with their dry performance. Was running about 32 psi - anyone got any suggestions for pressures? (Car is heavy - about 1500kg)

Quality wise they are in another league to anything else I've tried.

[Oilchange]

Temps are a funny thing, I needed to drop mine to 23/24 psi so when they were hot they ran at around 29/30 psi. Ran them initially at 29 and they went greasy after a single lap.
I was running DZ03G and funnily enough Dunlop recommended similar pressure drop for warm conditions.

[edh]

I'm still using AD08's on my track car - 944S2, 225/45/17. I think they are a great compromise - not far off the grip of the 048's / 888's, but usable on road and in the wet. The wear rate on track is also very impressive - much better than road tyres as they stand up when hot. As an example, I ran nearly new Falken 453's down to ~4mm on my Boxster S in just a couple of trackdays. I've since done several on my AD08's in that car, and in my 944, and the tyres have plenty left.

I have no experience of the AD08R's, but I will be putting them on when these wear out.