Hi, long time lurker fist time poster. After running a Mazda 3 for the last two years in THS, my lease finally expired and I picked up my Rx-8. I did my first autocross last week, and the car was amazing! I run in the Detroit region and was a bit surprised to discover that none of the other regions around us run street tire classes. Is this pretty common through the rest of the SCCA regions?

I'm a bit surprised if it is, our events usually run 150ish cars, and most of them fit in to stock street tire classes. There is not one B-stock car in my region running the seemingly standard issue kumhos v700's. Rather its a me, an M3 and a grid full of 350z's all of us running RT-16's.

 

Detroit is certainly not alone. There are dozens of Regions, around the country, running indexed Street Tire classes. Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, and a whole bunch more.

H's & K's,
Rick Ruth

 

it would be cool if my area had a region that actually held events within 2 hours of me and if the said imaginary region would have a street tire class like this...

 

Though this doesn't help to answer your question, I'm in the Detroit Region as well. Like you said, there aren't a lot of RX-8's out here, so it's good to hear that there'll be another one out autocrossing. I'm running TBS too on stock tires, though I might be making a switch to some Dunlop Direzza Z1's soon. I'll be at the MSCC event on Belle Isle on Sunday. Maybe I'll see you there?

 

I think I saw your car last year when they where held at Great Lakes Crossing. I don't make it out to too many of the MSCC events (I heard that Belle Isle was awesome though), but I will be at the SCCA memorial day event at DTE.

 

I'm confused. I just reviewed the solo categories and TBS is not listed. So is that a local non recognized category or what?

 

TBS is just BS but the "T" just means they are running street tires and your not allowed to run R-compounds like V710's or A6's or whatever else.

Our club (Winnipeg Sports Car Club) splits groups like this for all catagories, but we truncate classes together with PAX. So the trophies at the end of the year are as follows;

Stock R's
Stock Streets
Street Touring
SP/Prepared R's
SP/Prepared Streets

 

Yeah...I ran that event at Great Lakes Crossing on snow tires. I'm not doing that ever again.

I'll see you there if they work out their site issues.

 

In other words, it's a club specific category, which is why there aren't more clubs around doing it. That would be an answer to his original question.........

Thanks!

 

I suppose you're right about answering the original question, but as previously mentioned, you are absolutely incorrect about there not being many areas that run indexed Street Tire classes. SCCA Regions that run them are all over, in all corners of the country and most everywhere in between. Ther have been several SCCA National Tour events that have Indexed Street tire classes as an option. I'm sure the National Tour event in Milwaukee will offer these classes this year, again, as an example.

Perhaps you should find out why your Region doesn't run one? It is a fabulous way to attract, and keep, new drivers.

BTW, in answer to a remark by Kennetht638, I'm pretty sure that Dunlop Direzza Z1's are still a "Street Tire" (treadwear 140 or over) and would be eligible for use in any Region's Street Tire class.

H's & K's,
Rick Ruth

 

I have seen quite a few people run those in the other street tire classes. It seems that most people run one of these 4 tires:

Falken RT-16
Kumho MX
Direzza Z1
Eagle F-1

I am under the impression that the RT-16 or Direzza are the tires to have?

 

Seems like around here, lots of cars are on the Falken RT-615's. However, as far as I can tell, the top street tires are currently the Yokohama AD07, Bridgestone RE-01R and Dunlop Direzza Z1. I've seen a few good cars running Hankook RS2's as well. I'm going to the Dunlops mostly because they are a great value compared to the Bridgestones and Yokohamas.

 

You forgot the 2 fastest ones, Advan Neova AD07 and Bridgestone RE-01R. The TX region has a tire class, it's indexed and the tire rules follow ST meaning 140 treadwear and up. We usually have pretty good participation in Tire class with usually at least 5-7 Miata's and various other cars.

 

yes, as long as it's a separate class

if they try to merge it with the DOT-R tire class with an index factor then it's a fabulous way to start a street tire vs DOT-R inter-region war over what the street tire index factor should be

 

In SFR, we group all of the the stock-street tire cars into one class and then index the times. We also have a similar class for SP/SM cars running street tires.

 

yeah, some people think that alienates the street tire people too much if there are more of them than DOT-R people

the flip side is if one group or the other isn't winning then they think the index is f'd up

my opinion is that if you're going to use an index anyways they might as well run in some type of street tire group classing(s) using the PAX