American Racer report.

Two of the Chump team took one of the Integras to Edmonton for a club race this weekend. Chump Canada changed the rules, which allowed us to subtract the points for the coilovers, so we added adjustable upper control arms. Last year we were camber challenged, and used at least twice as many tires as we should have.

Anyway, they took a set of the new 200tw American Racers, and a new but aged set of Rivals- dated 2013, so the old compound. Track was green, fairly hot(80+ F) and sunny. Roughly an hour and 20 minutes of track time per day.

Racers started off quick, but got greasy within 5 laps (1:40ish laps). Based on tread depth, half worn on the fronts. No idea how much rubber there is under the tread. Rivals ran maybe 1/2 second a lap slower immediately, but came in, got about .5 seconds faster, and stayed consistent for the entire run. Treadwear is negligible. Rivals ran 10-15 degrees cooler. How does the new Rival compare to the old one for endurance track use?

I am sad, because we have a distributor for AR in town, and everything else has to come from Tirerack or PMC tire in Quebec.

TL;DR version- the American Racer might be a better autocross tire than the Rival, but its no endurance racing tire.

Well, better autocross tire than the old Rival is definitely not nothing. Do they measure unusually wide for 205s?

Yep. Not quite as wide as a 205 Hoosier, but pretty much the same size as a 225 Rival.

For what its worth the AR tires I used to race one do not like full throttle hard racing out of the box, or grease high wear would happen. Standard practice was to do 3 hot laps, let cool, 3 hot laps and cool,5 hot laps and cool. then you could get on them hard. I had discussions with some tire engineers back then (not AR guys)as I was in the electron beam industry at the time most of my machines were used to crosslink the inner liner (make the polyester bonded to the rubber on both side down to molecular level this makes it leak proof)anyway... the engineers surmised that the AR tires and most racing tires don't stay in the mold long enough to cross link the carcass fully but just enough to mold the tread and bond the layer thus the heat cycles finish the cure needed. Kinda wish I had stayed in the industry however the 25 machines I serviced over 20 are mothballed or shipped over seas now

Which American racer tires were you running? This is the leading brand for the challenge car.

205/50 R 15 200 treadwear.

I am strongly considering these for my challenge van.