Track & road tyres for a toyota mr2

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Hi all,
I have just registered as last night I completed my 1st track evening at snetterton. It was awesome and I was surprised how friendly and helpful everyone was...thanks to you all.
I have a toyota mr2 mk2 2.0 gt and as I discovered the standard tyres don't stand up to much after 4-5laps. Can anyone suggest a decent set of tyres that won't break the bank and that are road legal.

Thanks

Tim

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TypeRTom said:

Hi Tim,
Good to meet you the other night!
My shortlist of road legal trackday tyres would be:
Yokohama AD08R (what I'm running on the Clio)
Nankang NS-2R
Federal 595 RS-R

The above tyres also work well on a damp track but won't deal as well with standing water as a high performance road tyre.

Hi tom, I wondered if I might bump into you on here! Thanks for that the Clio did seem to handle well so might give them a go.
Cheers
Tim

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QBee said:

MR2 is a reasonably light car - I have a 1100 kg TVR and have found Federal 595 RS-Rs to be a good compromise tyre. I struggle to tell the difference between them and Toyo R888s on the track, their road grip is good and the price is far less than Toyos. Beware - there is more than one spec of 595s - you want the RS-Rs.

There are others - Yoko AD08, Toyo R1-Rs etc etc - look on the manufacturer's websites and the one you want is not their out and out track tyre, but the second choice.

So for example, Federal do the FZ201 as their track tyre, but it takes about three laps to warm up and is useless in the wet.The 595s take half a lap to warm up and can cope with a certain amount of rain.

No track tyre is going to be 100% on the road, especially in a monsoon.
The thing that makes a good monsoon tyre is the ability to shift huge volumes of water fast and keep rubber blocks on the road surface. It does this by having many deep grooves and flexible tread blocks.
The thing that makes a good track tyre is having a limited tread blocks that don't move much, allowing the tyre to keep gripping without over-heating.



If you think you are going to do lots of track days, then it may be worth investing in a spare set of wheels (don't have to be new or as per the manufacturer) and some track specific tyres. But get advice on what dimensions, offset etc you need.
But before you spend a fortune on tyres, get your suspension set up checked first - have a full geo done and get the dampers and suspension checked by someone who knows the cars and settings.

Thanks qbee