Tire development gone bad: Intersport LMP1 team and Kumho
 

http://www.americanlemans.com/news/Article.aspx?ID=3516

Detailed situation

http://sportscaranalytics.com/?p=122

The original Kumho tire news from January.

http://www.americanlemans.com/news/Article.aspx?ID=2763

http://www.intersportracing.com/

http://www.kumhousa.com/motorsports.do

BAD press for Kuhmo. They had potential. I personally was always a little weary of the splices in the 710, but never had problems. With the new Z06 and all it's power, I feel better staying with Hoosiers knowing it's a well proven product.

This makes you seriously wonder about the 710 and the rest of the Kuhmo line

For me, doing autox and de's, kumho's were a good dual purpose tire...
I really didn't like going un-american but had to go with what worked.
Since I don't really do autox anymore, I will be happy my next set will be HOOSIER :flag:

The C6Z06 has such limited options for tires (track or street) I initially went with the 710's and 18x12's for the rear. when Hoosier came out with 19's for the rear I had already warranteed one set (rears) of 710's and then the basically traded in the 2nd split (rears again) set for the Hoosiers.

I was uncomfortable with the Kuhmo's when I left their engineering staff and also their safety guy voice mails that were never returned.

They performed well but having to keep an eye on if my tread is spliting or not is not one more thing I want to be conserned with on track day, especially when seeing speeds up to 160 @ RA.

Kind of an old school way to manufacture tires IMHO.

after seeing the sidewalls of my Victor racers fail I know they equal junk. To top it off they would give no answers after I sent them the tires as we discussed.

IIRC it was the side wall construction that could not hold up to the turns. So they never really could test the rubber content.

Sounds like standardized tires just dont work on the high g-force P1 cars

That's too bad. Intersport Racing had at least two tests with Kumho at Mid-Ohio (May 3 and June 27) and one at Road America (June 11 and 12).

http://www.americanlemans.com/News/Article.aspx?ID=3135

http://www.kumhousa.com/pressrelease.do?newsId=176

I dont see what a P1 tire in the developement stages has to do with a V710 or a pickup truck tire.
I run on what ever tires work best for me at the time. Right now it is Kumho's. My favorite tire would be the Goodyear radial slick but at $400+ a tire I cannot run a new set for every race so they are out of the question. Another good point is that Pratt and Miller hated the Goodyear tire on the C5R so what works for us and what works on an ALMS car can be two very different things, unless you are running 12 hour races. I ran hoosiers for several years when they were far faster than the Kumhos but remember they had tons of problems also. I loved the 303's when they came out but you had to dismount them and flip them on the rim every session to keep the edges from cording the 304's and 305's just sucked all the way around and still corded the edges. The A6, R6 seems to be a good tire. I havent ran much in the last year and havent had a chance to try them if they are faster and more consistent I will run them but so far I think the V710 has been a gret tire.

Intersport using Dunlop tires for the rest of 2007

http://www.intersportracing.com/home...t-mosport.html

http://www.dunloptires.com/racingEve...ans/index.html

Intersport switches LMP1 cars

http://www.the-paddock.net/content/view/242014/49/

Velocity Motorsports' car

http://velocitymotorsports.com/gallery/v/

First they blame the tires and jump ship. Then they blame the car and change. At what point do they get a clue that it may be an issue with the team?:willy:

Hammer, nail, BANG!:smash:

Joe

My thoughts exactly! :rolleyes: Our tires on the P2 Mazda BK team worked just fine at Mosport with a 5 overall. :thumbs:

Well Liz Halliday isn't with the team this year. They did pretty well last year in the P2 class with Goodyear tires.

http://www.americanlemans.com/news/Article.aspx?ID=2512

Near lap 240 or so of the 2006 Petit Le Mans, Jon Field was holding off Timo Bernhard's # 7 Porsche RS Spyder for around 30 minutes. Bernhard was trying to get a lap back after problems forced the car to the pits for several laps.