if you know you know...

 

No, i know and I do not know.

 

I can't speak for redpriest, but I presume it's because in general, slicks have more grip, and yield faster lap times.

 

So he wants to win track day?

 

Don't we all?

 

No. I love the fact that I can drive my car to the track, thrash on it and drive it home and take my wife to dinner in it if we so desire. Leave slicks to race cars and actual racing.

 

I don't run slicks. I drive the the track, knock out the laps, and drive home too.

 

lol

 

It’s a big reason why the car is so great. You can do that, over and over. Slicks, while faster, often mask poor driving, harder on the car in many ways and require changing wheels at the track and/or towing. If I’m gonna do all that, I’ll put the race car in the trailer and go race.

 

Because, why not? They are faster. I have excellent car control. I've done just about 200 track days across ten years. I too, also have a stripped out race car that I run Pirellis on - I like their handling characteristics and quite frankly, they are more consistent and last longer than these cheater street tires that last one or two sessions on high degradation tracks.

Do you eat the same food every day?

Despite having this 600+hp full caged track weapon that weighs less than my GT3RS, I still enjoy taking the GT3RS. It's why I bought the thing. Because, while I have the flexibility to set great lap times with street tires and drive home, sometimes I just want to slap the thing on a trailer, drive 600 miles to a track, bang out some fast lap times, and then go home with no fuss. Or have the flexibility to try different tires, or have spares that I can swap to at track.

 

I still see absolutely no point to that, for me it defeats the beauty of it. Why not get a cup car where you could take it to track days and race it if you are gonna beat it up on the track.

Define lasting longer please. Slicks wear out incredibly fast if you are actually trying to get the most of out them you can, we talking heat cycles. I agree high end street tires fall off a lot after first couple sessions but after that have been very consistent through their life after that in my experience. Slicks will be at their prime for even less than that if we are talking Q times. Thats what slicks are for in my opinion and most track day people aren’t trying to extract .1 more than the next guy on the same tire. I’d venture to say a lot of solid drivers on street tires are faster than most on slicks in the same car. It’s funny who you see show up to a track day on slicks with their aluminum open trailers connected to a cayenne and can’t drive.

 

On a fresh, brand new set of Pirelli DH I see at various life of use:

0 - 3 HC: Absolutely amazing grip levels
4 - 8 HC: Slightly less amazing grip levels
9 - 12 HC: Mortal lap times, about the same as cup 2
12+: Probably worthless.

I've gone through probably 12-15 sets of brand new Pirelli DHB/DHF that I've sourced through Frisby Race tire, so I have a general good feel of how they are. I would take these tires for track use any day of the week over any Cup2R or Hoosier tire that we could mount. Out of all the "OEM" tires that are available for the GT3RS, I am lucky if I can get more than 12 heat cycles before they cord. I am not out putting around, every lap other than a cooldown lap or traffic lap is a maximum effort qualifying lap for me.

I am in complete agreement with you regarding drivers showing up with slicks that have no business running them. For most people, they are a complete waste of money and detrimental for proper driving, even for so-called "advanced" drivers - but we know that in reality, most advanced drivers really are just intermediate drivers.

For me, I am interested in extracting the maximum performance I can from the car within the limit of my abilities - and then once I hit that limit, push the car further using slicks etc. I haven't bothered yet, mainly because I haven't "downgraded" to 19s yet where slicks are available - and even then, once I do take the leap, I'm taking a measured, gradual approach. I'll run Goodyear Supercar 3R first and then progress from there.

Your argument to why not get a cup car could be applied towards its logical conclusion - "Why bother driving a street car of any stripe on track when the cup car is available. Why bother with a GT3RS when there are plenty of other cars with vastly power to weight ratios - etc". That leads to LMP3 cars which can be purchased, and other open cockpit cars like the Radical/Rush, formula3 cars etc.

 

Why drive anything faster than a Miata then if this is the attitude?

 

I'd love to ride in a GT3 RS with slicks.. I just don't plan to run them myself. If you ever make it to COTA, let me know!

 

For me, I do it because I no longer have the time to work on the race car, load it and all its stuff into my trailer, tow 4-16 hours to a track, race 3 days, tow home, unload and then repeat all of that again and again. So when I happen to have a free weekend and a track org is not too far from me who I can instruct or just drive with, I can hop in my car and go and then drive home. Race cars require a lot more effort, time and money to operate. If I start turning my street car into a race car, that defeats the purpose of the car and what it’s able to do out of the box. An LMP3 car is a ton of work, money and would require a large amount of infrastructure to operate, same for an F3 and you have nowhere to race that in the US, so not a great example. Radical Cup is very expensive to run as well, it’s not competitive in any scca class I’m aware of. At least with a cup car, it’s not awful to operate, can throw it in a trailer and do a track day and race in pclub as well. But you aren’t showing up in a modern era eligible cup car at any big stage event and doing well working out of your trailer. But it could at least offer someone the opportunity to go actually race and learn, in addition to doing track days. So if you have all of the infrastructure to tow your RS now and doing that instead of driving to the track and just having fun, you might as well get something more well rounded you can actually race with and do both. You are doing race car work and it’s not a race car.

12 heat cycles is 12 sessions, think you are mistaken. You should be able to get more than that out of cup2, GY, etc oem tires.