I think he is referencing you into the "Special Olympic's" quote. Which by default, I fall into also. Tardo autoxer, yes I am.

Which is funny that anyone would make fun of a guy who is ingrained so deeply into Solo. I would take his opinion with a lot of weight (no pun intended, sorry Sammy!) as not only is he a great driver but is involved in the sport as a retailer, course designer, advisor, etc. More importantly, he has lived through the tire wars of before so he knows how the history can play out.

So yeah, lets discredit him and make fun of him. Especially since guys like you are so much more knowledgeable...... and such great drivers!;)

I am all for the wacky street-tire wars. I've been DDing the Rival S for the last couple of weeks. They are quiet on the highway like no other R-compound I've ever tried, they're probably at least halfway acceptable in the rain, and they are so sticky it makes my head spin. If I get 10k miles out of them, they will be the epitome of "max-performance street" IMO.

Not much of a comparison, but I have last years Rivals. I've been caught in a couple of rain storms and no issues with them getting rid of water on the streets. Can't say I know them in a wet race environment.

I will never get 10K out of any tire because -3.3* camber and 1/8" toe.

How much of that tire wear is because the tire is sticky and how much is because the tread is squirming so much that it's just grinding away?

I suspect that a shaved RivalS would wear much better.

The sticker tread depth on the Rival S is 7/32nd, and the tread blocks are ridiculously, extremely large (compared to something like the R1R). It doesn't seem like there's much squirming that the tread blocks can actually do.

If you are talking about tread squirm, but actually mean wear from large amounts of toe, then yeah, I'll buy that.

I have heard from more than one secondary source that the Rival S was born specifically in response to the Rival performing poorly at the Nationals, but perhaps that is just a rumor.

Does anyone have more light to shed on that?

-Ryan

They brought several tire compounds to test immediately after Nationals on the same course at Lincoln and took the best results from that to decide which to use. I am not saying that is their only input, but I know it played a significant part.

i did hear the story of a bunch of people jumping on the BFG bandwaggon before nationals, and they all got slaughtered.

That's all rumors and hearsay.

That part happened though. The OG Rival performed poorly on rubbered-up (hoosier) concrete at Lincoln. I can't remember if that was last year, or the first year for the rival. Either way, BFG actually did their testing on the practice course at nationals in 2014.

Well I eat my words. I guess BFG thinks win on Tuesday (or Thursday) sell on Friday?

Still doesn't make sense to me. And there may have been like 20 BFG entries at 14 Nats so this scenario must have been at 13 Nats and seems confined only to STR where some historically high placing drivers didn't do so well. Makes even less sense taking that into account.

No matter what these tires are exceptionally fast, regardless of how subjective the TWR may be. And I'm not accusing anyone of anything. Tire technology has been known to be revolutionary at times.

And they are at least streetable as they can tread water. I wonder how these compare to Hoosier wets?

Not being a competitive autocrosser, I'm not worried about the terrific wear rate of the RE71R and Rival-S. If I was though, on a budget and trying to keep up with the fast parking lot racers, I'd be pissed. That's an instant 4x to your annual tire budget. Defeats the purpose of restricting to "street" tires.

OTOH, I'm with Andrew, moar grips for my street car that I don't put many miles on. We still have the standard Rival and all of last years 200TW tires for HPDE's, driving to the track and less than nationally competitive autocross.

Assuming Rival-S shaved to 3/32, I configured a PTE/TTE NB on paper that would be about 1-1.5s faster than our previous 144whp points car on a 2:00 course. Like low 1:58's at Buttonwillow, 1:37's at Mid-O, 1:32's at WSIR, etc.

I hope some of the NASA crew here can snatch some lap records and a few contingencies before Greg makes the change. I could even see it staying as is until after East/West Coast championships. Beating all the cars on R7's with shaved street tires. Wouldn't that be funny ?

This is pretty much what a number of people predicted would happen with a treadwear rating "street tires only" rule. Supposedly the tire exclusion list is there for this purpose, we'll see if it gets used or not.

--Ian

I don't know how the hell you restrict this though without some major enforcement issues. They essentially passed the buck to the tire companies by creating the treadwear rating rule, and now its getting *predictably* abused.

Tamper seals on the wheels & tires and force teams competing for an entire season to use the same setup for x number of races? Of course that will give a nasty advantage to whoever is trailering cars\tires, but even in the street tire class I bet the competitive folks are anyway.

Independent testing of wear in actual autocross conditions?

Tire budgets?

They all seem like terrible options

No, its more of pushing the limit of whats possible for passing the DOT tests. A 200tw tire still has to last twice as long as the 100tw standard tire on the DOT test circuit in texas. If it lasts 3 times as long then it could be marked as a 300tw but would be ok to mark is as a 200tw for marketing reasons. But not 400tw. IE the original RS3 totally could have been a 300tw+ tire but all the fast tires were 140tw so thats what went on the sidewall.

Right, the test has zero applicability to the actual use of the tire. For racing, it would be more useful to define the traction curve as a function of distance traveled at the slip angles that generate maximum grip, not tooling around a test course. The treadwear metric has zero meaning for how "consumable" a tire is in competition. You can have a tire that only has a few heat cycles in it after which point it will last damn near forever (looking at you star specs) but at much reduced grip levels. Stop to rotate the tires every 800 miles as allowed by the test and voila, you've got a tire that lasts a very long time.

.

Looking at Tire Rack, the 205/50/15 Rival has a wider treadwidth than the Rival S by almost a full inch. Checking the 225/45/15 shows almost a full inch difference between them as well.

I'm not sure how accurate that is. We have sets of both in our shop. We measured them and they are the same dimensions. The rival and the rival s are the same size and tread design.

I don't think that there is the loophole that you think there is. It is also being discussed on nasaforums here.