Tire Advice - stay on streets or move to DOTs
 

Welcome your input to, "Do I stay with a street tire or move to scrubs/take-offs of some variety"?

I have done 11 days at Road Atlanta. My instructor suggested moving to some take-offs from GT Racing. He says "you are consistent enough", "have good car control", "make good decisions" and "learn from errors"...enough with patting myself on the back.

I have collected 8 extra C5Z wheels and have then means to get extras to the track.

My car is stock motor and will stay that way. I have the DRM bilsteins and a mild track alignment (-1.6 front camber if I remember correctly). It's not a "track only car" nor a daily driver, and I will swap between track tires and street tires. Safety gear has been addressed.

I ran NT05 last year and they lasted 8000 miles and those 11 track days. Tire Shop says R888 are the next step. Lower times would be nice, but I have a lot to learn and that's not driving my question. Better braking traction would be neat. I run DTC60s front and back and get at least some ABS in the hard braking zones

1. In the long run are the take offs less expensive than running NT05 or R888?

Here's a video of my last outing. (I'm in the silver one and my best times so far are 1:46ish, although the C5Z in the camera car said we did 1:44s ...my GPS didn't synch that session so I have no proof that I did that)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUxURCOx8_k#t=158

Thanks for the expertise!

Tim

I didn't watch your video but my gut reaction is going to put the decision in your hands and be based on $$$$ more than anything. I think a set of R888 would give you the best learning tool, since they are 100 tread wear they are a happy compromise between street tires and R comps. This will give you more grip and more traction in the braking zones while still allowing you to work on your brake modulation techniques.

Take offs are cheap and might give you a little more grip BUT you have no idea what you are getting. I have bought take offs myself and can tell you that amount of rubber remaining is no indication if a tire has heat cycled out or not. In my case I had a set of fronts that were pretty good but rears that were completely gone, leading me to think my car was setup loose when in fact a swap onto a set of sticker tires showed the car was dialed in.

Most take offs are from pro teams and pro drivers beat those tires like stepchildren. A set of brand new R888 will give you a stable baseline to grow from and after those are done you can decide on a set of R-comps.

My opinion- If you are running competitively for time against other racers go with new RCompounds. If you are HPDE the Nitto NT01 is a nice tire.

:iagree: with Hi Volts on the used tires, you don't know what you will get. You would at least get a couple runs but money would be better spent on new.

Thank you both! Yes....HPDE only, no trophies or money on the line just passion to get better!

The initial price of the take-offs is appealing, but if I only get 5 or 6 track days out of them, then they are similar priced to new tires (Nitto or Toyo) and I don't have the added variable of not knowing what I got, right?

Thanks!!

Exactly.....you're not going to have the experience to tell if one of your 4 take offs are spent and you might spend several events trying to compensate for a condition you can't control from behind the wheel. What run group are you in?

Gotcha...less variables is good! (With Chin) I got my solo merit badge a couple of events ago, but that means I run by myself in the Green group (passing only in the straits). This spring my instructor is going to work with me on the Blue/Intermediate group (with Chin). At Road Atlanta, that means open passing (point-bys where you are comfortable) & faster drivers.

Thank you!

Tim

I've run scrubs and new slicks and everything between. Get new nt01s or r888s.

I run R888 on a dedicated set of track wheels. It's a great DE tire. My times went down and confidence went *way up. I think you'd enjoy the difference. I fun 255R18 and 285R19 on stock C6 rims (18x8.5 19x10).

Well, the tire shop exists to make profit, so I would expect that answer.


Good breaking skills will result in more traction, so you could either master braking technique on street tires or get stickier tires and brakes and instantly get more traction.


When I did this, it was definitely less expensive, but be sure to factor in the mounting cost/time/etc. Not sure what your time is worth.

One thing to keep in mind about stickier tires: they will put more wear and tear on other components, and can be a slippery slope. The vette is damn fun and a huge challenge to handle just stock with street tires.

I would pick the Nitto NT-01s just on the basis of consistency. You will learn more about what you are doing with the car if the tire is not constantly changing. Most street tires can't take being driven hard for more than a few laps and as mentioned above, you can't tell diddly squat about take offs i.e are you making errors, is the car breaking something or are the tires just going "off"

And all Toyo R888's from us are shipped FREE!!