Race Tires

[Andrew Garcia <aggarcia@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I too was in the same position about which tires to order for the SowDiv
six hour enduro. BFG has discontinued the 230 R1's in all sizes except
13. The 13's will stay with the old design until some time in the second
quarter. The new G-Force R1 is a sticker tire with only 3/32 of tread,
OO tread wear rating, and costs 22% more. BFG recommends not mixing old
design with new, but during the race a new G-Force R1 was corded. We
swapped both front tires with old R1's to finish the race. The new
G-Forces does not seem much different from the old R1, there were no
official lap times during the race as a incident took out the timing lap
on the start. From the crews lap times, the car was only a 1/2 sec
faster than the old R1's, but there were other changes to the car so
that time may not be comparable to previous lap times. The life of the
new G-Force on my ITS car was about 3 hours because of an incident, I
would figure in most cases I will see about 5 hours of track life before
replacement becomes necessary. The old R1's were good for about 10
hours, so there are some differences.

Someone had mentioned a tire from the A008's  family, well the A008 has
been out of production for a year now and any A008 out there is NOS.
This would be great fro most replacement parts, but very bad for a race
tire as time hardens them. Both Kuhmo and Toyo have reasonably priced
tires and much longer life, and then you have Hoosier and Goodyear - the
best your money can buy, but do not expect more than 2 1/2 hours at most
of track life. Hope this helps, I will stick with BFG for the first part
of the 99 SowDiv and see how they hold up. If wear becomes a problem I
will most likely try Kuhmo or Toyo as many other IT drivers have used
these tires with success. Hope this helps.

        ANDREWG
        Houston, Tx
        #63 ITS

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