RE: tires for autocross, oh my

["Glenn Wasserman" <glennwa@domain.elided>]

The difference between track tires and autocross tires is the
temperature they are designed to be driven at - track tires work best at
higher temperatures, and don't heat up to operating temperature during
an autocross....

...but that doesn't mean they're not still better than street tires at
an autocross.... Anyone care to weigh in on that one?

-----Original Message-----
From: Tessie McMillan [mailto:tessmc@domain.elided]
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 5:46 PM
To: alfa-digest@domain.elided
Subject: re: tires for autocross, oh my


Mars and Uranus are somewhere in my solar chart this week, so all of a
sudden I'm feeling opinionated... &:-) Anyway, I personally think it's
unwise to state that for all given tires of a certain compound that they

will behave a certain way (i.e., they only take a certain number of heat

cycles, or they are lousy in the rain, etc.) and therefore do or don't
buy them because of this or that. If it's not a competition autocross
event where tires will bump you into a higher performance class, some of

the discussion of R1s is pretty moot, anyway.

If you talk to the manufacturer's reps or go to the web sites you can
see
there are specific differences between the different brands of tires for

one given compound (say, R1s). Some tires are intended for rain, and
some
are better for dry. If you take a treaded rain track tire and shave it,
it will behave quite decently in the dry. Some tires behave very very
decently on one kind of car, but only marginally on a car with a
different engine location and weight distribution. You can drive the
heck out of your track tires, cord them, and never exhaust them by "heat

cycling", although you can also let your tires sit in the garage for 5
years and they could become worthless grip-wise. There's a lot more
that can be said about R compound tires.

Also, maybe I don't get out much, but I've never heard of a "not a track

tire, it's an autocross tire". It's been a few years since I autcrossed
regularly, but the folks I autocrossed with used the same tires at
autocross events as they brought out to the track. We used to run a
smaller diameter wheel on our car (and hence had a different size tire)
when autocrossing, but we never used a different compound tire. Can
someone amplify what is meant here?

I've autocrossed on street tires and on track tires, and the driving on
either is just a different experience to me. If you compare a used
street
tire to a used track tire, the track tire is still going to stick better

because the compound is designed for grip at a higher temperature.
However, if the track tire has no tread it is not going to grip in the
wet because there are no grooves for the water to be expressed away from

the tire. I do wish to point out that if you only have two tires, this
doesn't do you much good. On any of the cars I've driven, you need four
matching tires, although they don't need to be the same size. When
autocrossing on street tires I've found I need to drive much more
smoothly
to go fast. On track tires, I can accelerate and brake violently, so I
can
be much more aggressive without losing time to sliding. Personally, I
think street tires would be perfectly suited for Alfa spiders anyway
because of the inherent flexibility of the car. (This is just a
supposition; I've only autocrossed in a 911.) I don't think it is
possible
to drive an Alfa spider "violently", although I do think it is quite
easy
to drive one "aggressively."

If you are not serious about autocrossing, or are not autocrossing in a
conference for points, I think the discussion about which tires to run
is
kind of pointless! One can save a lot of money if you "run what you
brung"
and you can have a lot of fun that way. It's not until you're in a
conference situation that the change in tires can bump you up into a
different performance class, in which case, why would you be quibbling
about a couple of useless street tires vs. a couple of aging track tires

--  you'd want to go out and buy four new track tires and heat-cycle
them. And
then you'd prolly be modifying your suspension, brakes, seating, going
to
lighter wheels, taller tranny, etc.... Am I right?

I guess I should mention all this is moot if it snows....

Tess

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