Help! I started autocrossing the Evo in the fall and the first 2 events were on the Advans, with me placing 15/200 and 30/200 and first in AS each time. Great!! I thought, and bought some 245/40/17 Hoosiers and some Enkei RPF1s.

I have no prior experience with race rubber. My times have actually decreased! I am running 44/42 pressures. No camber changes yet. I find the grip to be no higher and the tires are much peakier and less forgiving.

JBrennen, others out there: besides me taking a driving course, what are the next steps? Do Hoosiers need negative camber?

 

Hoosiers LOVE neg camber and almost need it to run right. I would say get a good alingment and see how that does, take it slow I am sure you can get better with the car before you goto slicks. All slicks are going to do at this point are cover up the errors. Also from what I understand the evo understeers pretty bad on a autocross track but I have never autocrossed my evo. Also do a autocross school that seems to help a lot. Take it SLOW and learn the car better before you do slicks, I think that would be best but it's 100% up to you.

Hope this helps
Ryan

 

Here is a link from the Hoosier website on race radial care:
http://www.hoosiertire.com/Tctips.htm

Maximum front camber will be a must especially if you are running the soft stock springs. The new Hoosiers will be pretty greasy until they are heat cycled but after that they will definitely be better than the stock tires. Feel free to PM me for more specifics on Hoosier tires.

Eric

 

First, the comments about camber are spot on. Hoosier recommends -2.5 to -3 degrees camber for their DOT radials. The stock Evo can't get there, but get as close as you can.

Inflation -- I offered a co-drive on my Hoosier-equipped Evo to an experienced and successful autoXer. His first question to me was to ask what pressures I'd been running the Hoosiers at. He suggested 50 psi, but after I told him how much camber I had, we tried 45 psi.

Lot quality can have a huge effect on Hoosiers' performance. Hoosiers like a smooth surface. If the surface of the lot is suboptimal, Hoosiers won't give as much benefit.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, do not over-drive the car on Hoosiers. It will kill your performance. I learned that at my first event on Hoosiers. My first three runs, I did okay (good enough to win AS that day), but I was still driving the car like I had been on the A046 tires -- tossing it into the corners fast, scrubbing off speed, and then jamming on the accelerator resulting in a wicked push on corner exit.

During the third run, I spun the car in a tight corner, the first time I'd done that in six autocrosses. So for the fourth run, I just went out with the mindset that I would drive the car at 9/10 instead of 10/10, and concentrate on maintaining control, having a clean run and sticking to a good race line. I shaved almost 1.3 seconds off my previous best time of the day.

That lesson stuck with me in a big way. Basically, if you find yourself reacting to what the car is doing, you already screwed up. In autoX in general, and especially on high-end race tires, you want to be in control of the car at all times. You're not there to make corrections when things go wrong, you're there to stop things from going wrong in the first place.

 

I would have agreed when I first started autoXing the Evo. I did so much plowing out there I could have planted corn.

After getting some seat time and taking a couple of autoX schools, I find that I have no problem whatsoever with understeer. For some reason which I can't fully explain, my problems with understeer have practically vanished completely. One of the staffers at the second autoX school probably put it best when he told me at the end of the day, "You've forgotten how to over-drive the car."

I think that most of the complaints about understeer come from inexperienced autoXers who are driving too fast. The head instructor of the local autoX novice school has told me it's one of the toughest things to teach novices -- that you need to "slow down to go faster".

 

I have to agree with Jack. He has been more successful than I in both of our first year autoxing, mainly because he figured out how not to understeer with the cars sooner than I did

The R-compound tires and not understeering are the keys in my opinion. They are quite related as well. I could not utilize the power of the vehicle to my advantage as my brakes were over-powering the tires, hence I would coming into a corner too hot and understeer as Jack explained the situation with corns pretty well The R-compounds will allow me to brake harder and stop much shorter. I am hoping that my times will indeed improve 1.5 to 2 secs provided I drive the same way I drove in the last 3 autoxes in 2003; which I would hope I can improve some more actually.

If I got anything out of the Evo schools, it was going fast by not understeering. I am still not quite at Jack's level in autoxes, but my times right after the Evo scholl improved by 2 to 2.5 seconds on stock tires.

There is no question that both Jack, John, Filip and I have room to improve and it will be a very interesting 2004 season as nearly each of us will be in different classes (I am going ESP), it will be an exciting season.

One thing that is always humbling is having someone with significant experience drive your own car and see what the potential can be. I had Mike Cole drive my car in the season's last autox (BMWCCA) and his time was 1.7 secs better than mine even though it was his very first time in my car that morning. It was an eye opener, I was not expecting a difference over 1 secs; I just shut up lol.

 

All of your replies have been tremendously helpful, and jive with what my gut feelings were about both the tires and my driving.
I came from an Audi Allroad which I autocrossed (!!) fairly successfully and had learned to brake relatively early to prevent me from plowing off the course. My braking points have clearly moved in the wrong direction since moving up to the evo, with the illogical expectation that I will now be able to defy physics.

Thanks as well for the excellent advice on vehicle setup. I may well go back to the Advans a while to properly learn my car, and most importantly, take a driving course!

 

Yep, get all the breaking done BEFORE the turn.

 

Hoosiers have about 50 heat cycles in them (# of runs) before they go off. Overheat a Hoosier and that will remove a couple of extra runs from the tyre's life each time. Hoosiers are very sensitive to being slid, this heats them dramatically, after which the entire run is lost - try to push on and the tyre just slides and burns up even more. Hoosiers reward precision and punish "enthusiasm", back to the sliding problem.

Understeer kills Hoosiers immediately, they go from not gripping because they're cold to not gripping because they've overheated in 3 turn from the start line. 90% of understeer is caused by going into a turn too fast - remember that going in 1mph too slow costs about 1/100th of a second, going in 1mph too fast costs at least 1/2 a second. Make the time coming out, not going in - use the old motorcycle maxim "In slow out fast, in fast out dead".

Kumhos are much more forgiving, much less sensitive to overheating, and last two or three times longer. On some cars they're also just as quick as Hoosiers, so it pays to try both out.

Charles