What's the farthest you've driven on race tires?

[erok]

I'm going to an event about 100 miles away tomorrow and was thinking of putting the race tires on and leaving them on all weekend since there's another event Sunday. Anyone know how my Victoracers will wear through 200+ highway miles?

[NoCones]

I drove several comparable roundtrips (actually probably a little longer than 200 mi) on Yoko A008RSII's a few years back...they're not quite as soft as Kumho's, but they're a race tire nonetheless. They held up fine.

Longest roundtrip on Victoracers is probably about 70-80 miles.

Just be sure it's not going to rain.

Bryan

[pitcrew]

I know that Eric Petersen has driven as much as 12 hrs to an event and back again on Victorracers to have them as rain tires while trailering his Hoosiers. Last year we would leave our V's on the car for the weekend @ 2 or 3 day events rather than keep changing them. I know a girl in TX that drove all last year on a set of V's because she couldn't afford a spare set of wheels. She got ~ 10K miles out of them. They are pretty good in the rain < 50-60 mph, My wife has won two national events on them in the rain, once in a downpour that had people spinning on street tires.

[NoCones]

Originally posted by pitcrew
They are pretty good in the rain < 50-60 mph.

Yeah, there a decent rain tire if you've got a fair amount of tread left and you're on an autocross course where it's safe to lose control.

My comment was based on getting stuck on the Interstate in a downpour...I don't think you really want them on in any significant rains if you're taking a long trip.

As for "driver's" results, I was 4 secs faster on Hoosier A3S03's in the same Ft. Myers rain...does that make them better than "pretty good" in the rain?

[CamaroFS34]

Originally posted by erok
I'm going to an event about 100 miles away tomorrow and was thinking of putting the race tires on and leaving them on all weekend since there's another event Sunday. Anyone know how my Victoracers will wear through 200+ highway miles?

In order to heat cycle new Kumhos, I put mine on at home and drove to VIR (a four hour drive) on them, then proceeded to do two track days (Saturday and Sunday) on them.

My car was driven to Topeka from Maryland (16 hour drive, about 1200 miles) on the Kumhos, though this was because my Kumhos had more tread left than the street tires!

I've routinely left my race tires on after an event because I was too tired to change them. I'll drive back and forth to work on them for a couple of days before I would actually get my lazy butt into gear for the 15 minutes it takes to change tires. What I found is that it doesn't seem to make much difference in the wear of the tires. As long as you're not punishing the tires on the road (ie., not driving at the limit, like you would be at an autocross or track event), you're not really going to do much to shorten the life. At least not with Kumhos, and definitely not if it's only 200-300 miles.

Karen

[nxracer]

Hoosiers: Probably never move than 65 seconds

Kumhos: Weeks

[pitcrew]

Originally posted by NoCones

Yeah, there a decent rain tire if you've got a fair amount of tread left and you're on an autocross course where it's safe to lose control.

My comment was based on getting stuck on the Interstate in a downpour...I don't think you really want them on in any significant rains if you're taking a long trip.

As for "driver's" results, I was 4 secs faster on Hoosier A3S03's in the same Ft. Myers rain...does that make them better than "pretty good" in the rain?

I was more refering to Ayer, where she had to sit in grid for 1.5 hrs while the event was held for a monsoon, the cones were floating away! It was still pouring down buckets when they called her to run. She had the wipers going full speed thru the runs to see, and was throwing 6' high rooster tails. Her class leader changed to street tires, and Driver was 2+ sec faster, and had faster raw times than most of the open wheel cars in her grid on rain tires. I don't remember if you ran the same heat at Ft. Myers with her or not, but Carol Cone changed to Hoosier dirt trackers and was 2 sec slower than D on the Kumhos. The conditions varied greatly from heat to heat that day.
I drove I-95 back to our hotel on Sat of last year's Petersburg pro in a downpour on K's with the wear bars showing. the only time the Miata's front got light was when an 18 wheeler passed us, throwing a wake like a tugboat.
YMMV!

[NoCones]

Originally posted by pitcrew
I don't remember if you ran the same heat at Ft. Myers with her or not

Same heat.

I don't deny that they're a good choice in the rain, I just didn't find the reasoning all that convincing.

As for the interstate in the rain...I remember Scott saying that he was getting wheelspin (on Kumhos) in 5th or 6th gear in that same downpour!

Bryan

[autxr]

Just to clarify...

highway driving, HEAVY rain, 45-60 mph tops. i was able to get wheel spin on a slight incline in 6th gear, at 45 mph. I wasn't happy.

that being said, the tires were whipped. I had 3 grooves left on the set of Kuhmo's in question, that would be 3 radial grroves, nothing accross the tread.

I wold not hesitate to drive at highway speeds on a full tread Kuhmo in all but the hardest rain storms.

If I was less concerned about winning and more about having fun I would get the Yokohama A032R or the Toyo Proxes RA1.

Both at full tread are just like any other street tire in the wet (or better than some), and will be better than all street tires in the dry (both are off the pace of the Kuhmo's in the dry though).

Scott