Your Thoughts on Mandating 200+TW "Street Tires" in Improved Touring?

[Rabbit07]

...and, go.

Piss Off!

[240zdave]

I am open to the idea.

[Greg Amy]

Piss Off!

What if Hoosier offered a 200TW tire...?

[SLUF]

Even though I'm double dipping often from ITA to STU or even FP in my POS-325e, I'd think favorably on the proposal. That would "commonize" my tire selection for some other organizations as well.

[dickita15]

I think that it may be high time to put IT on street tires. There are other classes such as STL and Limited Prep Production, and Touring that offer much of what Improved Touring used to.

Solo has done the hard work here and my understanding is their rule set works. I am told they have 3 competitive tires. There is a provision to exclude a tire if it is a ringer.


By going to street tires it would be a dramatic cost savings money that could be invested in entry fees.


The IT7 guys I race with run 100tw Nittos and we are getting 5 – 6 weekends. I can only imagine 200tw would add more weekends. We also found that since going to harder tires brakes and bearings and such are lasting longer as well.


SCCA has too many classes that are very similar. Street Tires would differentiate IT.

[jwasilko]

I think that it may be high time to put IT on street tires. There are other classes such as STL and Limited Prep Production, and Touring that offer much of what Improved Touring used to.

Solo has done the hard work here and my understanding is their rule set works. I am told they have 3 competitive tires. There is a provision to exclude a tire if it is a ringer.


By going to street tires it would be a dramatic cost savings money that could be invested in entry fees.


The IT7 guys I race with run 100tw Nittos and we are getting 5 – 6 weekends. I can only imagine 200tw would add more weekends. We also found that since going to harder tires brakes and bearings and such are lasting longer as well.


SCCA has too many classes that are very similar. Street Tires would differentiate IT.

It's an idea with merit, though the lack of a good rain tire seemed to be an issue as we saw by the loss of two IT7 cars in the rain at Palmer.

Do 100-200TW race group and keep us away from the spec pinatas and maybe....

[Greg Amy]

It's an idea with merit, though the lack of a good rain tire seemed to be an issue as we saw by the loss of two IT7 cars in the rain at Palmer.

Those had nothing to do with rubber compound. Those were due to being cheap and not swapping to tires that had tread.

[jwasilko]

Those had nothing to do with rubber compound. Those were due to being cheap and not swapping to tires that had tread.

new NT01 don't have much tread. RA1 would be a good rain.

[dickita15]

It's an idea with merit, though the lack of a good rain tire seemed to be an issue as we saw by the loss of two IT7 cars in the rain at Palmer.

Do 100-200TW race group and keep us away from the spec pinatas and maybe....

Good point in that we would need to have a rain strategy. at Palmer i had rain tires in the trailer but honestly in the 3 year i had raced Palmer I had never seen that much water on the track.
that event also makes me happy i had a defroster and heater core. the two cars that crashed both had visibility problems and could not see the standing water.

[Rabbit07]

What if Hoosier offered a 200TW tire...?

I road race because I like going around corners fast. As fast as possible, that's a step backwards using 200 TW tires. If I liked driving fast on street tires I could do that on my way to work with a street car.

[Greg Amy]

I road race because I like going around corners fast.

You drive a Miata.

[Rabbit07]

You drive a Miata.

[dickita15]

I road race because I like going around corners fast. As fast as possible, that's a step backwards using 200 TW tires.

Chris, that's great, looking at your signature line you would still have 3 other categories to race in on DOTs. Plus a forth that i do not know what it is. why not have some differentiation between categories.

[Rabbit07]

Chris, that's great, looking at your signature line you would still have 3 other categories to race in on DOTs. Plus a forth that i do not know what it is. why not have some differentiation between categories.

Someone on the CRB or BOD thought it was a great idea to dump SS and replace it with Touring 4 and Bspec. Not sure we are further a head at this point.

I understand the differentiation of classes part. You could get me to the middle on that. The idea that this will save $ is ridiculous. We got here due to tire wars to compete in a DOT class. All you'd be doing is hitting the reset button and it would start all over again. No thanks

[jumbojimbo]

Someone on the CRB or BOD thought it was a great idea to dump SS and replace it with Touring 4 and Bspec. Not sure we are further a head at this point.

I understand the differentiation of classes part. You could get me to the middle on that. The idea that this will save $ is ridiculous. We got here due to tire wars to compete in a DOT class. All you'd be doing is hitting the reset button and it would start all over again. No thanks

You think going to 200 tires will start a DOT tire war in IT? Now that is funny.

[Greg Amy]

There are two primary reasons I see 200TW tires being useful to Improved Touring:

1) Category Distinction and Differentiation. What differentiates IT from other categories? Prep isn't massively different than LP Prod, and Touring is inching - leaping - its presence away from its Showroom Stock roots. IT tires are no different than Touring or Super Touring. IT doesn't have wings and splitters are limited. IT does not go to the org's biggest event of the year.

If asked to explain why run Improved Touring instead of any other class, what's your answer?

200TW tires would clearly differentiate the category in a significant way, something that is not done by any other category.

2) Attraction from other groups. There is a large and growing population of racers out there in series and with orgs that do not allow tires with a TW lower than 200. Limiting the class to 200 makes it attractive to them. Those orgs do that specifically for costs purposes. No one can legitimately argue that a $250 10-cycle tire can ever cost less, long- or short-term, than a $120 more-than-10-cycle tire. And while outliers can never be eliminated (really, you're going to shave your tires so low that they'll only last 2 sessions?) they can safely be ignored. Because outliers are not for whom we make decisions.

Improved Touring needs to make positive changes that will differentiate it from the existing crowd and make itself attractive to those not interested in chasing the Runoffs-of-the-Year. And this would be a really easy and cost-effective way to do it, one that would be quite easy to revert if it didn't work out.

And, really, 3) because those that actually want to spend the big money on consistently replacing fast tires probably don't really give a crap about Improved Touring anyway...

Food for thought.

[kgobey]

This is what I meant by mandating 100TW + tires. There are viable and inexpensive solutions for us that are not 200TW. In fact the Maxxis 100TW option as far as we have been able to tell is a really great race tire, does not heat cycle out and a set now 2 years old is only getting replaced because the cords are showing!!!

HOOSIER RADIAL WET H2O Wet Racetrack & Autocross Only
UTQG: 40 C A
TOYO PROXES RR Racetrack & Autocross Only
UTQG: 40 C A
HOOSIER R7 Racetrack & Autocross Only
UTQG: 40 C A
HOOSIER A7 Racetrack & Autocross Only
UTQG: 40 C A
HANKOOK VENTUS Z214 Racetrack & Autocross Only
UTQG: 40 C A
HANKOOK VENTUS Z214 Racetrack & Autocross Only
UTQG: 40 C A
BFGOODRICH G-FORCE R1 S Racetrack & Autocross Only
UTQG: 40 B A

TOYO PROXES RA1 Racetrack & Autocross Only
UTQG: 100 AA A
TOYO PROXES R888R Racetrack & Autocross Only
UTQG: 100 AA A
Nitto NT01
UTQG: 100
Maxxis Victra RC-1 DOT-approved R compound
UTQG: 100 A A

Maxxis Victra VR-1 Extreme Summer tire
UTQG 200 AA A
TOYO PROXES R1R Extreme Performance Summer
UTQG: 200 AA A
NEXEN N FERA SUR4G Extreme Performance Summer
UTQG: 200 A A
KUMHO ECSTA V720 Extreme Performance Summer
UTQG: 200 AA A
HANKOOK VENTUS R-S4 Extreme Performance Summer
UTQG: 200 AA A
BFGOODRICH G-FORCE RIVAL S 1.5 Extreme Performance Summer
UTQG: 200 AA A

[JeffGio]

What if Hoosier offered a 200TW tire...?

Maybe, hear it's in the works, but worry it'll be too good when shaved to nothing, and of course they will be overly proud of their tire.

[kgobey]

While I can appreciate the desire to both distinguish IT from the rest of the SCCA's classes as a "beginner" and a "regional only/low budget" class I don't think racing on non-race compound tires is actually the smart thing to do.

I realize that non-race tires are cheaper, and I realize that non-race tires are almost as good as race tires are in some cases, I do think that running tires that are not specifically designed to be raced will not have any measurable effect on either participation or cost of racing.

My rationale is this:

A: CrapCan/Lechump racing is successful because of 3 basic aspects we can never achieve with IT:
------------------1. simple rules with an absurdly low entry cost.
------------------2. a crazy amount of track-time for the dollar.
------------------3. Teamwork and group-cost sharing that both enable an aspect of racing that binds groups of friends as well as distributing the cost-load across 3 to 6 members.

B. Street/non-race tires tend to display other issues that DOT-R compound tires are engineered to avoid
------------------1. Chunking of the tread blocks
------------------2. Severe rolling of the tire and sidewall/edge degradation

Note that just because we know that "Extreme Performance Summer Tires" are good for racing Lechump/Crapcan doesn't mean we'd see everyone come out on these Extreme performance tires.

C. Size. A quick check of the Tire Rack list I see nothing smaller than 14" and of the 14's and 15's on offer, I see one size, a narrow selection that many of us would have to make changes to the cars - relatively expensive changes to accommodate.

As an example. My car is an ITS car. I can fit 225/45 and 225/50 Hoosier R7's on that car because I bought a wheel that has an offset that makes them work with rolled fenders. I have a specific set of springs that I use with Hoosiers that overpower the grip for the R888's I run on track days and I have quite a bit more camber than I would otherwise need. I have invested a lot of money into getting this right, and time. You're asking me to do this again for the RE71R or BFG Rival S1.5. I'm not looking forward to that. But maybe that's something we can dismiss as realized cost. But it's still painful to think about doing this again.

To me the answer of controlling the cost of tires and still distinguishing IT as the "beginner" and a "regional only/low budget" class, would be to seek out a supplier who'd be able to step up and supply long lasting, "race-engineered" tires with a regional level contingency. Toyo RA1's, RR's R88R's, Maxxis Victra RC-1, even someone hungry like https://www.natiresusa.com/ might be willing to jump into the DOT race tire market if we proposed that 5000 IT racers would all switch to their tires with the understanding that they'd step up and supply us. Maybe even Hoosier would create an "IT" tire that we would all use if we reached out with the idea and the threat of us all dropping them for a spec tire.

Another point of Lechump/Crapcan racers. They desperately want somewhere to test and improve their cars that are not tied up in the endurance series. A lot of these guys want to race in the SCCA/NASA and MCSCC where I race. Giving them an IT class of their own would be far more attractive than asking them to step up and build ITC, B, A or S cars... ITJunk/ITLemon would be a much more successful idea IMO, and let them know they are supposed to follow their series' rules to be compliant and let them self-police. If it becomes a "thing" then we can break out their classes into sub categories.

While I understand the need to re-brand IT, I don't think starting here is actually the right idea. This has the potential of undermining the interest of a lot of the current IT community. Let's start with a spec tire.

[Knestis]

A spec tire will be problematic in a multi-mark category because the size availability issue is even greater than if you have a number of manufacturers from which to choose.

Look - at the end of the day, you're opposed to the idea of 200TW tires because the status quo works for you. There's nothing wrong with that but sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. The good news for you is that SCCA rules-making has traditionally been pretty responsive to minority needs - if you've got the ear of the powers-that-be. When I go looking at current IT grids, I see pretty much NOBODY who argued that "National status will kill IT." Individual entrants come and go, and turnover in the club - in racing - is astronomical. The Club won't make a decision based on any kind of strategic plan, and a few connected people can pretty much kill any proposed change, so you're probably safe.

K