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February 11,
2001
It’s been a
while since my last update to the racing section of this page.
What a time to come back! After
the “fun” last month, we decided we needed to get going on the race
tires for our S2000. A quick
call to Tire Rack and our Kumhos were on the way.
We decided to go with 225s for the front and 245s for the rears.
We have been warned that this combo would yield a more “lively”
rear end than stock, but since we’ve been driving the same sizes in the
Kumho street tires, I felt somewhat prepared.
The street tire combo is VERY tail happy and it is not uncommon for
me to spin the car during autocrosses.
Once my new tires
were in, I decided to remove the street tires from my old stock rims and
move them to the new rims we had bought.
We could then mount the race rubber on the old factory wheels,
after all who cares how they look. This
meant our service department would be charging me for 4 removals, and 8
mounting and balancing. At
least that was the plan. Sadly,
the mechanic was unaware the tires and rims were different size.
As luck would have it, the street tires ended up correct on one
pair, but the race rubber was off on both pairs!
This required him to remove all four and re-mount and re-balance
them. Good thing everything
came in early. As a side
note, with the 245s on the 6 1/2” rims and the 225s on the 7 1/2’
rims, the width of the tread was almost identical!
The reason I caught the mistake was because when the tires were
stacked up, it looked like I had four identical tires.
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All
week I had been concerned about the weather.
There were reports of heavy showers forecast and possibly
thundershowers. Our
race location is very dry and usually this would not bother us, but
the southerly direction of the front could have posed a problem. Sunday dawned very overcast and humid. We took jackets, a change of clothes and umbrellas just to be
safe. The drive to our
track underscored how sticky these new tires were, I could hear all
the little pebbles being picked up and tossed around the wheel
wells.
As I walked the track in the
morning, I was amazed with the layout.
It had lots of flowing corners and only one slalom, and
promised to be a very fast track.
Franceen ran our car first, and after each run she was
beaming from ear to ear! “The
car has so much grip, and there’s no tire squealing at all!”
She steadily dropped time from each of her runs, progressing
from a first time of 60.333, to 59.356, to 57.855, and finally to
her best of 57.771. My day started off
good, and I was also impressed with the overall grip the new tires
provided. There was a
noticeable improvement in steering response over all the street tires
we’ve run over the last year.
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My
first run was a comfortable 54.778. On
my second run, coned in the last corner before the timing light and this
resulted in a 55.990. My
third run would be my best, a 54.246 because the last run was a DNF when I
got loose in the slalom and missed a gate.
Our
times
earned us first and second in A Stock, and placed me in 8th
place overall and Fran in 32nd place out of 103 drivers (a new
record for attendance for us). The
PAX standings were even better, 5th for me and 28th
for Fran! Our
adventures with the new tires are just starting, and I’ve been assured
that the tires were too new to really grip well, they’d get better for
the next event.
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March ,
2001
March
ends our autocross season. |
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