carbondan

Has anyone run porsche cup n2, s8m and s9m tires and have feedback on how they compare?

My quick take from my own experience running Hankook F200, Pirelli, and Michelins on my previous Huracan GT3 Evo is as follows:
Michelin S9M - By far the best tire I have used personally. Provided almost magical levels of grip and did not degrade dramatically over the course of a full day running (5x30 min sessions). Did my fastest lap ever on the last lap of the last session.
Hankook F200 - Great tires for non competitive DE use. Definitely not comparable to the Michelins in terms of peak grip - approximately 1-2 seconds slower on a 1:40 laptime. Last me 2-3 track days until I'm ready to trade them out for better grip. Lap # 3-6 are the best they'll be. There is a steep drop off after the first 30 mins and from there the degradation over the remaining 3 days is very gradual. They never catch me by surprise.
Pirelli DHB, DHF - Absolute garbage in my experience on the Huracan GT3 Evo. This came as a shock to me because the car is designed for them, and the setup was to the settings in the tech manual which are optimized for the Pirellis. Further shocked at my poor experience based on many positive reviews on here. They simply would not hook up anywhere, anytime. Tried 3 sets, one scrub set and two sticker sets, at 3 separate tracks. Same experience across the board. Had to keep ABS and TC settings 2-3 notches higher than Hankooks or Michelins just to get around the track. They'd break grip over small bumps, and did not inspire confidence to say the least.
Hoosier R7 - Used to run these on my Viper ACR-E street car, shouldn't really even be in the conversation. Rock hard and frequent QC issues, mine would all leak at the bead and I went through a good number of sets of them.

On the 991 Cup I have tried Hankook F200, and a used set of Yokos with the matching hard springs. The yokos were used and came with a car I bought. They lasted me 2 decent track days and had good feel, no complaints but hard to give a apples to apples comparison since I don't know how much time was on them when I received them. For what it's worth, a pro GT3/GT4 racer that coached me was a big fan and recommended them highly.

spiller

I have run Pirelli DH (old compound), Hankook F200 and Yokohama A005 on my 996 cup. The Hankook were about 2 sec slower than Pirelli. Pirelli were quick and lasted a long time, around 550 kms and 10+ HC before I discarded due to lack of front end grip and braking performance. I have liked the Yokohama the best. 700+ kms and 10+ heat cycles and only very gradual drop off in performance. Peak grip is as good or better than the old DH imo. The car has a much better front end with these than the other tyres I mentioned.

The Hankook and Yoko need about 0.5 less camber than Pirelli on account of a stiffer sidewall. I have not used new Michelin but have heard they have the most peak grip of any slick out there but drop off quicker than the others. I am using my car for casual sprints and DE only so I am looking for a compromise between speed and longevity.

FNWY2004

I’ll let you know when I get a chance to run the S8M. Just purchased them to do some time trials in New England where we have to come out of the gate and get up to temp fast. It will be nice to have data to share between the two since there seems to be more people using the S9M. I looked for an S7M, but they don’t seem to make them in my cup sizes 27/30.

The alternative is to the S7M is run a Hoosier A7 for TT, but the cost difference is so minimal, I decided to stick with the Michelins.

I found your observation on the S9M pretty much spot on. I have run several new and slightly used sets. IMO they seem to start falling off after 10 heat cycles or so. Anything past 20 and you are on borrowed time fighting harder to get slower. They seem to heat cycle out before they physically cord, unless you lock the front brakes like I tend to do…lol.

carbondan

Braking performance is where I draw the line to stop using a set of slicks as well. Towards the end of ~3 days which equates to about 20x20min HCs for me, I notice a steep drop off in braking performance with the F200s and that's when I swap them out.
Also very subjectively, the Michelins have had the best 'feel' for me as the driver, not sure how to explain it better than that but I seem to have a much easier time knowing exactly what the tire is doing and where I'm at relative to its peak available grip.
Yokos I would put at second in my experience (which may be extra impressive considering I don't know how many HCs were on the used set I ran).
F200s can be less communicative (possibly due to the stiffer sidewall?) however for the vast majority of your sessions with them their performance is very flat so maybe easier to judge.
Pirelli again, nearly unusable in my experience with 3 sets of 2 variants on the Huracan GT3 Evo with factory recommended setup.

I have just come across a couple of older posts here and most of the comments mentioned how bad the N2 cup tires are, I wonder if anyone here can shed some more light on that? I would've figured they should be well optimized for the 991 cup to give the car exactly what it wants.

wxq99

I think it is pretty hard to compare different tire brands as unless to run them at the same day. For my experience, the Pirelli has a much softer side wall so we run a lot more camber on them, I believe I ran 3.5 to 3.75 degree at rear with Pirelli on a couple of different cars. I can not be that aggressive at the front as the brake performance is compromised with too much camber.

The ideal hot pressures on Pirelli and Michelin are about the same, I ran 28 PSI hot on Pirelli DHE/DHF on different cars, I think you can run one or even two PSI lower on Michelin. In cold days, we started from 19 PSI in order to get to 28 PSI hot and have to be really careful at the first 2 laps to avoid structure damage. For the life span, the Michelin will last longer but the performance fall off a cliff after the first 5-6 laps then it is very consistent. Pirelli degradation is more graduate, let's say in the qualify session you did 3-4 laps with the peak of the tire then you can do a cool down lap to reactivate the tire and do another 1-2 hot laps and the lap time can be about the same (less fuel even tire is a bit older).

Generally speaking the Michelin lasts much longer, we see a lot of teams double stint the tire in the IMSA WeatherTech endurance race. I have never got more than 200kms useful life out of Pirelli DHE/DHF on any track. For one continuous session, I think they are pretty trash after about 90 mins full green session.

Hankook is really garbage comparing to Pirelli or Michelin, very slow...I would run Yokohama if just for track days.

PS: Never buy used slick tires, you could never know how hard those tires could have been abused. You will understand what I said if you have been doing racing for a while. The take off are not even coming in sets (even the seller said they are). Different tires can have completely different life left. When you got something really ****, you don't know if it is because your driving sucks that day or the car is broken. You may even have a high speed puncture and end up on the wall if the tire was abused badly previously with structure damage....

wxq99

Dan, I think your bad experience with Pirelli on Huracan GT3 was because of a bad setup. The car is very sensitive to everything. A 2mm ride height or rake difference can be at least 1 second per lap and huge rear confidence difference. A 2-3 mm spring preload can make huge balance change as well. On GT3 cars, you are not just riding on mechanical grip, but also aero grip so everything has to be spot on. I had two teams run the car in the past with the setup sheet which I provided, they never got the setup correct, the rear always snaps and I span so many times during a weekend. I then decided to do the set up by myself in my shop using the exact setup sheet but just make sure everything was spot on, the car was completely difference. We then made some changes at the track side and it was moving to the correct direction.

38D

My experience is that Pirellis DH series are great, albeit a bit short lived in their grip. I’ve run them on 6cups, 981 Clubsport and now a 992 cup all with good results. It does sound more like a setup issue than something implicitly bad about the tire. The one downside is that after about an hour of run time (regardless of number of heat cycles), the grip falls off dramatically. They won’t cord quickly, but they are like hockey pucks.