Street tires in IT??
Lately, there's been some chatter about how good the newer street tires are and how they make very good race tires. Chump, lemons, etc guys use and abuse them for hours. Other than the 'divide by 4" thing, the Chump and lemons guys claim that the racing is cheap largely due to the tires lasting much longer than the typical Hoosier R Comps.
Closer to home, our own IT.com regulars, the Blethens (Steve and Raymond) have been running their ITR RX-8 in enduros with some 200TW tires. (TW=Tread wear rating)
In the NE area, Dan Shepard (Dano77 here?) has organized an IT7 class that runs Miata wheels and Nitttos that they buy from Walmart. he's rather pleased with their cost savings.
Over on the brownboard, there is a active thread where a guy who runs Chump wants to come and play in IT. But he's very worried about the costs, and thinks street tires are the answer. But........he'll be schooled and he knows it. (Not just because he's a new racer, or his car isn't max prepped, but because he knows he's giving up significant time per lap due to the tires.)
He's competitive so he's reluctant to go into a gun fight armed with a knife.
He's looking for ideas on how to get IT off the purple crack.
So, as you can imagine he's gotten some responses from the SCCA guys, along the likes of "You want to run street tires? You can. Stop whining", while others have been open to ideas and discussing concepts.
My blue sky idea was to start regionally, and have a gentlemans agreement where each IT class allowed a certain % weight break if you ran on 200TW or harder tires. That % would be different for each IT class, as the affect on performance will be largely nil on ITC cars where it could be significant on heavy high power ITR cars.
There are issues of course: Not all cars have weight to lose: some are as low as you can go. Some cars won't be able to get the tires in the right sizes. Final drive, and chassis setup changes would need to be made in other cases.
So it would be an optional thing. And the % weight break would be carefully researched and designed to NOT make the street tired car a winner. it wouldn't be fair to existing stakeholders to change the rules, and have the rule be such that all can't take advantage of it. So the % would be conservative.
Again, the idea would be to attract guys who look at racing as fun, and want at least a longshot as a trophy, but can't afford the crazy tire costs.
Costs: Depends on tire sizes, but, figure many guys spend $1000 a set for hoosiers with mounting balancing etc.
That number drops to 600 with these cheaper street tires. Lets say all up it's $700.
Not that much savings. But the real savings come in when you factor in how the tires cycle out. IF you're a guy with a RWD ITS car say, and you aim for trophies in a competitive area, you'll likely retire your Hoosiers after 8 sessions.
Reports are that these newer streets last 20 sessions or more before slowing down.
So, at 16 sessions you've got $2000 in Hoosiers, or you could have $700 in streets. at 25 sessions it's $3000 in Rs and $1400 in streets, 33 sessions its $4000 in Rs and $1400 in streets, and so on.
Bigger picture, if this were to take off regionally, the ITAC would probably take a look at it, based on requests. It wouldn't be easy or simple, but I'm sure they could figure something out.
So, what say you IT guys??
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Originally Posted by dickita15
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