I run bsp and I'm a lazy **** so I just run the rt 615's and I love them. The stock tire is an excellent tire, but I Went from the 235 to the 255 rt and the car to me handles great. I think the rt's are just as sticky mine are still new, with wear, they get better. I'm about 1 second behind the guys on race tires so to me thats good enough. Changing tires to me isn't worth it, I run mainly for fun carring extra set of wheels and tires and changing them at the event in 90 degree heat just isn't worth it to me.

 

Yea it really depends on how often you take your car to the track. If you autox 2-3 times a month, or do more than 3 track days a year then I think its worth it to get second set of wheels w/ r compunds. If you run your street tires that often then you are just going to destroy them... If your only doing a few events a year then id just run street tires.

 

I autox at least 3 times a month but I dont drive the car alot other wise.. pretty much just for fun and autox only.. you will be fine with the rt 615s. since your just startin out seat time is the best, then if you get serious get another set of rims and tires.. I beat 90% of the cars on race tires on my rt 615s

 

SO what can of cars do you beat? Are they skilled drivers? Maybe the last guy at one track can beat the fastest guy you race with...

 

I Dont understand what your asking me, your post makes no sense.. Point is you can do very well on rt 615's in auto x with a good alignement.. Yes you can beat guys on race tires,, do you beat them all no, obviously race rubber is a huge advantage, and some guys have there cars dialed in well and drive well.. In my region I end up beating alot of them on race rubber, and run with in a second to a second and a half behind the real fast cars.

 

He's saying that it doesn't really matter if you beat the people at your auto-x, because at another auto-x with skilled drivers, you could be worse than the last place driver in that event. HE's right, RT-615s are great tires, but they cannot compete with race tired cars at auto-x except for the slow ones that aren't very good. Using my SCCA region as an example, the top-finishing STU/STX guys are usually not within 2-3 seconds of me. I have race tires with stock suspension - they have RT-615s or equivalents and nice suspensions. It's not close, but they do beat some of the lower-finishing cars in my class.

 

This is a good point, because the opposite is true in my region. The top STU guys regularly whoop up on SM, regardless of what tire they run.

http://www.rgrscca.org/results/FastPax07.txt

To the original poster: a 0.1s victory is not enough to proclaim any results about tire performance unless both your and your opponents runs were all within 0.1s of each other. If you're an alien like markdaddio, then 0.1s will actually reflect some change in the setup, but for mortals like us 0.1s is lost in run to run variation and driver error.

EDIT: And if you don't believe me, look at the top finisher in the link above -- Paul Brown beat me by over a second in a stock '93 MR2. It's certainly not like he had a faster car.

 

I had always heard that the Falken Azenis were heavy tires, so I did some research:

Size: 255/40-R17
Falken Azenis RT-615: 27.5 lbs.
Toyo RA-1: 26 lbs

You guys can probably tell me if that's a difference worth mentioning.

 

thats how it is in our region aswell..

 

Having driven stock EVOs with stock tires and falken rt-615s, I would have to say the rt-615s have slightly more grip and are very predictable at the edge. If you are just a beginner, learn to drive the car using street tires before you progress to any R-comps as you are just going to waste them and learn little. As some have said earlier, there are more important things to learn, such as learning the line, learning the handling characteristic of the car at the limit, being smooth, etc. R-comps will hide a lot of your driving flaws. IMHO, with the stock suspension r-comps are a waste as you don't have the necessary camber to sufficiently utilize them, you just end up prematurely wearing out the outer edge and the extra grip will induce more body roll.

 

DaWorstPlaya speaks truth, and I am an example of it. The only difference is that the V710s appear to be designed to work very well at around -2.0 camber, which we can get with our stock suspension. However, my body roll is ridiculous to the point of really not allowing me to make full use of the V710s. I am quite fast and much faster than most, but I'm not as fast as the tires can be for reasong concerning the stock suspension _AND_ my novice abilities. My race tires have definitely hidden some of my driving deficiencies over this year of racing, which is my first year. I just couldn't stand to dork around on street tires and not be competitive at the top of my class (SM), so I u sed the V710s anyway. It's been fun, but I'm sure I haven't improved my driving as much as I would have with my stock Advans or the RT-615s.

 

Use this link as my example:

http://www.rmsolo.org/msp_eventpts.php?rep=1_20060617SS

Look at STU, then SM. This is a great example, because the winner of both classes is an Evo, and the Evo driver in STU is a _better_ driver than I am, imo. His PAX's are higher than mine on average. He has nice street tires with a good suspension and few power mods while I have stock MR suspension, V710s, and a lot of power, especially down low. I got him by 2.7s and the next guy by 3.1s. However, Russ in the Evo was even with the #4 guy in SM, which is a powerful 03 Cobra with 315-width V710s on all 4. So, yes, our STU guys are very good, and they usually PAX high (higher than this on average - sometimes 950-960 points), but they don't beat the good SM cars. I took 1st, but our best guy locally whoops the hell out of me in his M3. I'm just fighting for 2nd overall.

 

That honestly is a point I didn't think about, the covering up driver flaws...so maybe I should stick with just an rt615 for now.

I am not splitting hairs (the .1 win) but I was just going by commentary people made towards me and my buddy, that I was faster probably due to my rubber since he had coil overs and light weight rims vs me being stock, I'd rather not lose any advantage/stickyness but at $250 + a tire it will be VERY costly to keep replacing the advans.

I am also thinking about getting a 255 tire, but I read its better to put that on a 9in wide rim...really wish koseis came in 17x9 on tirerack.com...my hp mods are getting me booted out of most classes anyway so I'm not too worried about tires/sizing bumping me up.

 

Yeah, 255s are better on 17X9, and if you want 17X9, get some 15.5lb Enkei RPF-1s for racing. Otherwise, the RT-615 255s still fit very well on the stock-rims or stock-sized rims (17X8).

Did you see my road racing vid with my RT-615s when I passed 3 Z06s? It gives you a good idea of how well they hold up. They weren't perfect, but they were damn good based off my lap times...

 

You can fit 275's on 17x9's. A few Evo's in the SF region are running 275 V710's on 17in rims. If you are buying a set of track wheels and tires, might as well get as much rubber as you can. Just my $0.02