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is tread wear important on track day?

Grintch

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For autocross, it's the tire to have.

For the track, I am hearing rumors that it is too soft, so it wears fast and overheats on heavy cars like the Mustang.

Personally, I give an edge to inside-out asymetric tires (like the Rival) over directional tires (like the R71). Because you can rotate them to any corner instead of just front to back. Thus making it easier to equalize wear.
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spiller

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For autocross, it's the tire to have.

For the track, I am hearing rumors that it is too soft, so it wears fast and overheats on heavy cars like the Mustang.

Personally, I give an edge to inside-out asymetric tires (like the Rival) over directional tires (like the R71). Because you can rotate them to any corner instead of just front to back. Thus making it easier to equalize wear.
Thanks for the feedback. I have heard they do wear quickly. Obviously you can still flip directionals in order to rotate them effectively but yes, more work and expense to re-balance etc.
 

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Actually, the factory Pirelli P-Zeros are not bad track day tires. Once you get them hot they are actually pretty decent. They are 220 TW so they are not as sticky as some of the tires mentioned here but they are good enough that most drivers won't push hard enough to find the difference, and they wear better than a lot of the super sticky stuff.

The best part if that if you make friends with some of the tire shops in your area, you can get almost new take-offs for pretty cheap.
 

BmacIL

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Actually, the factory Pirelli P-Zeros are not bad track day tires. Once you get them hot they are actually pretty decent. They are 220 TW so they are not as sticky as some of the tires mentioned here but they are good enough that most drivers won't push hard enough to find the difference, and they wear better than a lot of the super sticky stuff.

The best part if that if you make friends with some of the tire shops in your area, you can get almost new take-offs for pretty cheap.
This is what I understand as well. That said, they're a crappy street summer tire as they do not grip well unless they're hot, a decent bit hotter than street driving will get them.
 

Tobey

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Have you tried the RE71R? It is suppsedly like an r-comp which I am skeptical about.
I've never used them. But what others say is that if your car is really light (<2000 lb), and you use a wide tire, you can get an 8-hour race out of a set. On a bigger, heavier car, 2-4 hours is the most you can expect, and it overheats quickly if driven too hard.

Sounds a lot like the Rival-S; better for autocross than track day use.
 

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Whiskey11

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Have you tried the RE71R? It is suppsedly like an r-comp which I am skeptical about.
Considering the Bridgestone Engineer at the head of the RE71R project admitted that the rubber is their motorcycle race rubber compound put on a street tire carcass, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the tire handles more like an R-Compound tire than a "street" tire. Personally, I find their street performance to be quite exceptional when they still have tread left on them! :)
 

spiller

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Actually, the factory Pirelli P-Zeros are not bad track day tires. Once you get them hot they are actually pretty decent. They are 220 TW so they are not as sticky as some of the tires mentioned here but they are good enough that most drivers won't push hard enough to find the difference, and they wear better than a lot of the super sticky stuff.

The best part if that if you make friends with some of the tire shops in your area, you can get almost new take-offs for pretty cheap.
After 150 miles on the car I have to say the pirellis are better than I expected. Terrible (unsafe in even slightly wet conditions from my initial experience though). Not sure how they'd go on the track with regards to chunking but they're perfectly fine through the mountains. The tires are not the limiting factor on a stock car, put it that way (*cough* rear suspension). I also spent some time on ZII star specs on another car today and by gosh they were impressive for a street tyre. They're very much on my short list with AD08R.
 

spiller

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Considering the Bridgestone Engineer at the head of the RE71R project admitted that the rubber is their motorcycle race rubber compound put on a street tire carcass, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the tire handles more like an R-Compound tire than a "street" tire. Personally, I find their street performance to be quite exceptional when they still have tread left on them! :)
I have a lot of experience on track with R compound but don't want the fuss of two sets of wheels with this car so an extreme summer that performs like an R-comp would be preferential to me. I would even sacrifice longevity if it can handle track abuse and then get me to work the next day. If they're overheating after only a couple of laps however (as some has suggested on these boards) then it's a pass for me.
 

Whiskey11

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I have a lot of experience on track with R compound but don't want the fuss of two sets of wheels with this car so an extreme summer that performs like an R-comp would be preferential to me. I would even sacrifice longevity if it can handle track abuse and then get me to work the next day. If they're overheating after only a couple of laps however (as some has suggested on these boards) then it's a pass for me.
They overheat because they were designed specifically for Autocross/Goodguys and not track days, although track days in cooler climates is probably possible on light cars with perfect setups.

That said, guys over at the F80 M3 forums are getting about 36 sessions out of their 265/285 staggered setups on their F80 M3/F82 M4's. Of course, that is with proper alignment and rotation of the tires and running them till they chord.

I got probably 110 autocross runs and 7k miles out of my set from last year on an F-Street Mustang. They could have made it another event or two if I wanted to unmount/remount them again but I didn't feel like it and we need new tires broken in for Spring Nationals.
 

spiller

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They overheat because they were designed specifically for Autocross/Goodguys and not track days, although track days in cooler climates is probably possible on light cars with perfect setups.

That said, guys over at the F80 M3 forums are getting about 36 sessions out of their 265/285 staggered setups on their F80 M3/F82 M4's. Of course, that is with proper alignment and rotation of the tires and running them till they chord.

I got probably 110 autocross runs and 7k miles out of my set from last year on an F-Street Mustang. They could have made it another event or two if I wanted to unmount/remount them again but I didn't feel like it and we need new tires broken in for Spring Nationals.
What constitutes a session? I assume this is HPDE you are referring to with the BMW guys? 36 sessions is impressive in what is a heavy car. I doubt the F80 is much lighter than the S550. Also better rotation for a square set up as opposed to staggered. What am I missing here?

Also excuse my newb question, what is an "f-street"?
 

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36 sessions could be anywhere from about 500 to 1000 minutes (and perhaps up to 9 track days). On a per-minute basis, autocross is probably more abusive from abrasion but less severe from a sustained time at temperature point of view.

Just as a data point for comparison, my car's MPSS (285/35-18 x 4) have 10 track days (something like 42.5 x 25 minute sessions) plus somewhere north of 4000 street miles on them and they're less than half worn to the wear bars. Although they were at least a couple track days past their prime, they were still datalogging above 1.25 lateral g's during track day #10.


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Whiskey11

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What constitutes a session? I assume this is HPDE you are referring to with the BMW guys? 36 sessions is impressive in what is a heavy car. I doubt the F80 is much lighter than the S550. Also better rotation for a square set up as opposed to staggered. What am I missing here?

Also excuse my newb question, what is an "f-street"?
20 min sessions according to the post over there. F80 is around 3500lbs.

If you get properly sized tires that helps... Bridgestone sells the RE71R in a 305/xx/19 that is a solid size to start from. I'm not sure any narrower is going to last longer than the 305 will.

F-Street is an SCCA Autocross Class that is for basically stock cars... shocks/struts, a swaybar, catback exhaust, camber allowed by service manual (my car is -2.0 up front and -2.2 out back), and an air filter is about the extent. Tires have to be 200 TW and have to fit on stock width wheels of +/-1" diameter and +/-7mm of offset. Literally the worst case scenario for tire wear in autocross.
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