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Bad news Rick. You are qualified.
This is what I was looking for! I’m around nascar’s top 3 series tires all year long and I’ll take note of the changes made to the tire through the season. Usually it is just the compounds that differ but you can find small differences in construction every so often. I do agree that for lapping and good fun you want a long lasting and consistent tire to keep cost down and the whole operation much simpler. Or you can buy everyone’s old tires for the cheap and slide around on those and try to learn on the bad stuff before moving up to the faster stuff. While not the fastest it is cost effective atleast.I've been kind of lurking around this thread and not saying anything...Back a few years ago Pirelli was supplying tires to the American series, I don't know why, but since I handled them everyday, something felt off..the tires just had a different "feel" to them, I brought this up to AJ, and as I recall, the car had fallen off a bit as well. Some minor changes were made in the setup and all the time was recovered. About a week later I talked to a buddy in Europe, he informed me that Pirelli had just changed the construction of their tire in that series..I'm not sure, and I can't prove it, but I'd bet that Pirelli unloaded all that old European stuff on the US series. Those tires were over a year old and we used them with no problem once we figured out something was amiss.
That being said, they were kept in a warehouse out of direct sunlight, it would always be preferable to run "fresher" tires rather than old ones, but that's what we got. With regards to used tires, once they get that one heat cycle, they change, as I have said, the first 4 laps on a tire will be it's fastest, we use all kinds of black magic to make those count, and it's up to the driver to find a hole and get it done, once those laps are lost, the tire will never perform that fast again. If the tires are used, and kept in a cool dry place, they can be rehabilitated to some extent by the application of Goat Pee, they can never be fully restored, but they can be made better, and in the end, they can get a few more runs out of them that can save money. This is one reason I think tire treatments should be legal, but in most organizations, they are not.
One thing that I'm trying to understand, is that if you are doing lapping days, the tire compound really doesn't matter, I would get the tires that have the most longevity, you are not racing anyone, you are trying to get driving experience, so a good consistent tire is what you need to do this. Pirellis, notoriously, are faster than Hoosier/ Contis, but as many of you know, they fall off precipitously when they go off, dropping seconds per lap, this is also part of the gamesmanship/ strategy that figures into qualifying, and since those tires have to be raced on, making them last the race.. There is quite a bit going on there. Hoosier/Contis on the other hand are not as fast but very consistent across their life cycle and they don't fall off as bad as the Pirellis.
I've been hearing a lot of good things about the BF Goodrich tires, and there is an endurance series that is running them as a spec tire, they can run the same tire for the entire 24 hours..that would be what I would run. You really don't want to get into a self inflicted tire war, because they never end well and are very expensive, and unless competing, it's not even necessary. On top of that, let's say you and a buddy are going to the track and he has one more driving day than you do, if all else is equal, you should be faster than him...until he gets new tires, then vice versa so who happens to be faster on any given day, is really moot, depending on weather conditions. I'm not sure why guys are all concerned with the tire compounds and then they don't use nitrogen or do the pressure temperature compilations, you can change handling characteristics as much with pressure as you probably can with tire compounds, so why get so specific? just find a consistent tire, go out and have fun.
If you decide to go the competition route you have just tripled your tire bill, a guy I was helping showed up at the runoffs with 2 sets of stickers, he practiced all the days with decent used tires, and saved a set of stickers for his race, problem was, there were 2 qualifying days left..and a lot were ending in black flag all conditions, so we had 1 day to qualify, but the temperature was high, so do you use the stickers for that? or do you roll the dice and try and keep them for day 2 when the track will be faster? but if the day 2 qualy ends in a black flag with no laps you now have no decent time..basically, you need at least 3 sets of tires for a race weekend, to do otherwise extremely limits your ability to go fast and you've already spent thousands to get there, why show up with limited tire options?
A personal observation is that the Hoosiers heat up quicker than the BFG gforce R1Ss ( on a road course ) , so the start of the race means you have to work doubly hard to heat up the BFG donuts, but during a 35 minute race , the BFGs seem to stay more constant. Though I really like the Hoosiers the two tires were close enough for me that the $300 savings with the BFGs swayed me.