Should have asked Andy if you could borrow some of his 15x9 Kogekis :) Flow formed. Enormous brake clearance. Built to a 550 kg load rating instead of the usual 500. $180 shipped. Built specifically for track Miatas.
Photography by Tom Suddard
Where were you during the great Hankook Ventus R-S4 shortage of 2024? Staying home and stockpiling? Running other brands? Squeezing one more track day out of that two-year-old set? Or were you desperately chasing tires like we were?
If this is all Greek to you, here's some history: Earlier this year, Hankook had a factory fire that delayed shipment of some sizes of their popular R-S4 to the U.S.
Why does that matter to us? Because Lucky Dog Racing League requires everybody run the R-S4 as their spec tire in an effort to keep costs down and speeds reasonable. They've partnered with Hankook to offer discounted pricing and generous contingencies, too, making it mostly a win-win…
Unless you've built your Miata around a weird size that happened to go out of stock indefinitely as you were preparing for your next race. Uh-oh. We built our LFX-swapped Miata around 15x10-inch wheels and 245/40R15 200-treadwear tires–tires that we simply couldn't get before our next race with Lucky Dog.
Fortunately, though, Tire Rack came to our rescue. Because they have so many giant warehouses, they're better insulated than most distributors against supply chain disruptions. And while even Tire Rack couldn't get us our preferred size, they did manage to scare up two sets of our alternate—the slightly narrower 225/45R15.
Despite being out of stock at Hankook Motorsports, Tire Rack had them on our doorstep a few days later—and they even heat-cycled them before shipping, a move that, as we've discussed, increases durability on track.
"Wait, I thought you had to buy your tires directly from Hankook Motorsports to run in Lucky Dog?" Normally, you do—but the rulebook specifically makes exceptions for situations like ours, where your desired size is out of stock.
We'd found tires and met the letter of the rules: Now what about actually installing them? Time to jump the next hurdle, meaning our 10-inch wide König wheels. In short: There was no way we'd be able to stretch our 225s onto our 15x10s, so we needed narrower wheels.
Our own tire testing guru Andy Hollis recommended we downsize an inch, to 15x9-inch wheels, and a few days later we had two sets of König Ultragrams, sized 15x9 inches with a 35mm offset. This is König's newest flow-formed wheel, and had everything we were looking for: Low weight (12.67 lbs.), reasonable cost (just over $200 online) and, above all else, excellent brake clearance, leaving plenty of room for our massive new front brake calipers.
[The biggest brakes yet for our V6 Miata endurance racer]
Wheels and tires in hand, we mounted everything up, stacked them next to the car, and breathed a sigh of relief: We'd solved the shortage and shoed our race car for its next event.
Should have asked Andy if you could borrow some of his 15x9 Kogekis :) Flow formed. Enormous brake clearance. Built to a 550 kg load rating instead of the usual 500. $180 shipped. Built specifically for track Miatas.
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