tyre choices

[Oilchange]

Few questions if I may,

1. What List 1a/b tyres are people choosing to black about on track with?

2. What's the best usable wet tyre if you can't use cut slicks? ie is shaving/buffing back the tread blocks on a road tyre still a thing?

3. Are Zestino Gredge from DT any good, they have my sizes and are reasonably priced so...

[NoUserNameAvailable]

Yoko A052's will cover every condition apart from monsoons. More expensive than most but you only need one set of tyres.

Used the Gredge tyres once. Never again. They were awful.

The adage that you get what you pay for applies to tyres more than anything else in motorsport in my experience.

Edited by NoUserNameAvailable on Monday 18th May 09:55

[Trev450]

Uniroyal Rain Master for the wet if you are going down the two tyre route with maybe Toyo R888R for the dry and damp conditions.

[Oilchange]

Trev450 said:

Uniroyal Rain Master for the wet if you are going down the two tyre route with maybe Toyo R888R for the dry and damp conditions.

The route I revert to frankly. I have the triple 8s already

[whp1983]

NoUserNameAvailable said:

Yoko A052's will cover every condition apart from monsoons. More expensive than most but you only need one set of tyres.

Used the Gredge tyres once. Never again. They were awful.

The adage that you get what you pay for applies to tyres more than anything else in motorsport in my experience.

Edited by NoUserNameAvailable on Monday 18th May 09:55

This….. AO52 is amazingly decent in the wet (until such point standing water overrides the tread depth). Genuinely surprised me….. switch on quicker than a direzza in dry conditions too.

[CanoeSniffer]

AO52 is simply king, closely matched by some others in the dry but comes into its own in the wet. I think on a ‘value for money’ sliding scale it still somehow comes up competitive despite the exorbitant cost by virtue of being simply superior where other semi slicks like R888R, AR1, can’t hope to match it in the wet. However they don’t last how I’d like them to for the money, and on a big heavy race car with compromised setup like mine I found I would roll the outside edges of an AO52 even with generous sidewall allowance, eventually the failure mode was always premature delamination starting at the outside edge. R888Rs in comparison go on forever and ever, although after they’ve been used once or twice in the dry they give up what limited wet handling characteristics they had.

I was actually chuffed with the Gredge, again looking at the big VFM price/performance scale I was super happy with their level of performance- giving up ~1.5-2secs to the established options around Castle Combe, and I was more than happy to run with that for the huge price difference. However acknowledging that my car is big, heavy and compromised, the Gredges tore themselves to bits when pushed hard. I had a scrubbed new set for a 15min quali at Donington, they came in with rubber falling off the canvas and that put paid to the Gredge dream for me. If you drive at 6/10ths then maybe you’ll be okay. For me it just showed the value of the R888R which doesn’t fare great on performance/price, but which I could drive hard on in my big silly heavy car until they turned bright purple, over and over again. Eventually they go hard and lose grip, but only after giving a bloody good innings, and that for me was preferable to tyres which fling themselves to pieces prematurely.

[Oilchange]

Glad you were able to at least give the Gredges a go, how much does the Jag weigh?

I run an Esprit, coming in at about 1300kg and with 235 17 fronts and 285 18 rear tyres it is amazingly gentle on them which is why I would more likely be happy to compromise on them and probably use them daily

[CanoeSniffer]

The Jag runs to a 1350kg minimum weight when racing in a championship, but can get down to 1250kgs in race trim without ballast when running in other series. I run square so I can rotate, either 235/40R17 or 245/40R18 again due to championship restrictions. It’s a car that I felt was kind on its tyres, due to running mostly R888Rs which were wearing lovely and even and lasting forever, and then when moving to more sensitive compounds I realised it wasn’t!

Here’s one of the Gredges that was pretty much new on for the singular quali session at Donners



(By the way an Esprit race car sounds all sorts of spectacular and wonderful! Any pictures?)

[stevieturbo]

Oilchange said:

Few questions if I may,

1. What List 1a/b tyres are people choosing to black about on track with?

2. What's the best usable wet tyre if you can't use cut slicks? ie is shaving/buffing back the tread blocks on a road tyre still a thing?

3. Are Zestino Gredge from DT any good, they have my sizes and are reasonably priced so...

1. What sort of track and for how long ?

2. How wet ? Pissing rain, standing water, or just a damp track ?

[WombleCate]

CanoeSniffer said:

R888Rs in comparison go on forever and ever.

+1 on finding the Toyos give great VFM. While they don’t have the grip of the Avons we used to use, they last at least 15 heat cycles. We’re not always certain which are our ‘Race’ or ‘Test’ tires.

Though when the Toyos do eventually go off they’re like wood.

Amazed that tire wore so badly in one qualifying session at Dony, wasn’t it also cold & wet?