I've done HPDE's for almost 2 decades. Until this coming Thursday/Friday I have never had race rubber. Any advice/tips to go by? 205/50/15 Continental ER-DR on a 2500lb Dodge Neon. I got them for $400 shipped as a 'discounted/discontinued' a couple months ago straight from Hoosier.
First, how old are they ? Relating to a previous page. continental may have dumped some old tire on Hoosier to get rid o
I ran Hoosiers, A6/R6, On my ZX2SR. Basically they offered more grip. No earth shattering difference.
Start with the recommended pressures.
I haven't looked for the date code.. I'll do that in a few hours. Hoosier makes the Continental slicks. I've never had anything more than a bfg rival or Dunlop star specs....
Braking gets a little better, apex speed gets a couple notches faster. Lap times for me go down as a consequence of being able to carry more speed through corners. Every time I try a slightly different R tire I need to spend a weekend figuring out how fast they get hot enough to grip and how fast they get too hot to grip, and how high the pressure can climb through the session before they are giving up grip potential. It's your basis feel thing.
205/50/15 Continentals? Didn't know they made anything in that size. In the market for that size and always looking for more options.
As a general rule, they'll fall off of slip angle a little sharper than a normal street tire. They grip more, but when it's exceeded in one way or another (speed, temps, acceleration, etc...) they'll typically let go without much warning and it's a little harder to recover.
At least that's my opinion. They're awesome though. On average, I'm about 2-3 seconds per minute of lap time faster on race compounds than super sticky street tires like RE-71's, RS3's, etc... It's obviously dependent on other factors, but in most instances that is what I've found.
Besides the ultimate grip, as mentioned above the sidewall windup happens a lot faster and the same goes for the tire unwinding. They will also cover up hack driving because how rapidly the scrub speed.
Tom
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