Re: Tire help. PLEASE!!!
Last time I checked, there are no special driving requirements for purchasing a set of R-comps or slicks. Both will make you feel like a track hero.
No, but it does make you look like a dumb ass when you have mongo wide slicks on a supercharged Aerial Atom and you are getting lapped by a 192hp Civic with 225's. Ugly stuff.
:frown: :biggrin:
Sure, there are plenty of faster dry tires with ever shorter life cycles and narrower envelops. Another setup with more grip. However, until you are getting the most out of what you already have, it just really doesn't matter. In a HPDE context, who cares if a tire is 1 second faster at SubaTubaWuba? New/Used/Corded/DOT/Slick my guesstimate 95/100 the simple fact becomes that the limiting factor is driver, not the tire, so anything beyond the minimum is just a waste of money. In many cases the lap-times won't change at all, and even if they do it will be due to an increase in driver confidence not traction. The faster tire might well make the car a little faster, but it certainly isn't doing anything to make
them any faster which should be the goal.
Call me old-fashioned here, but unless someone just has a lot of money to burn (which I readily recognize there is a crap ton of that out there in this sport) I think working your way up is the better/safer approach here. Putting someone in their first year out on R6's or on a racing slick sounds pretty ridiculous to me and an invitation to disaster. My concern is that they will either not get them up to temp, or they will feel like they are on rails, and the only good I can see coming from either is getting the grass in the in-field mowed.
Another point is that going fast is great, but that extra 1-2-3-5-10 mph is a lot of extra momentum to carry the car on an off, so my perspective here is that it is safer to learn the basic theory and car control skills / pushing the limits / make the mistakes at the slower speeds. More predictable tire characteristics and better feedback are also arguably the better match with the inevitably slower reaction times and insecurities characteristic of new drivers.
So I am trying to not be hasty and make a bad decision.
As to the tires, my plug here is to just get a decent set of good condition track tires in make-sense sizes that won't break the bank, and focus on getting the seat time you need above all else. When it comes to competition tires I often use take-offs for practice and test days at 1/4 the price with a few heat cycles on them. There is an old saying that if you can't win on used tires, the problem probably isn't the tire. When I was doing the street/track thing at DE's I used to look for clearance sales on older models. At this point you just need to buy seat time, not maximum performance.
As to the compound, from your usage description, then non-withstanding the grip/$ ratio I think the extreme performance street rubber is just fine. If you want to step it up, probably an intermediate competition radial like a RA1, or the NT-01 would be fine given the fact that you are really only driving to and from the track. I personally don't care for the 615's road racing (an auto-cross tire, they tend to get greasy). On the more aggressive side the A048's tend to heat cycle out very quickly on the street. The R6's I don't really consider a street-able option by any rationale measure. I can't advise you on every compound, the fact is that their are a lot of options out there that will probably do well for you at this point.
Then I have to make a decision whether I will continue to use this car or buy a piece of shit like yours and track it instead. :biggrin:
HPDE's are supposed to be about driver development, not dick meisering. I would shy away from the increasingly pervasive HPDE culture of out-spending the next guy, because in the end they both look like a bunch of dumb asses.
Having gone down this road myself (having also had a late model NSX as my first track car), I can tell you that while a very capable & enjoyable sports car, it really isn't a great learning car. Your learning curve in an NSX is going to be orders of magnitude steeper than that of your friend in his piece of shit that he isn't afraid to walk away from. You'll push harder, afford more seat time, and learn most all the same principles cheaper, faster, and better in the POS. If you can learn to drive a slow car fast and make your mistakes there, you'll be in a much better position to take advantage when you step back into your NSX. For the cost of a season of rotors and tires, let alone the CTSC - you should be able to find something more than suitable at some point.
