MarkPcar

John, How did you end up in the races?

jrgordonsenior

Second in Sunday's first race, 3rd in the second. When will I see your new Spec 911?

mowblowgo

Several SWC teams pre-season tested the 888's and found that the stiffer sidewall required significant suspension alterations compared with previous
RA-1 settings. Most of the Porsche teams ran wets during the Sebring race but practiced and qualified on shaved tires. You may want to check with GMG since they are local to you. Ask James to give you some basic setup info. The teams I have spoken to like the tire, but agree that it requires a much different chassis and alignment approach.

TraqGear

Crap, that's a huge difference JR. I'm thinking I'll go back to the RA1's for seat time events and R6's for actual races. R6's should get me a little better lap times. What do you think?

iLLM3

Interesting... I love RA1's and for my first event of the season switched up to R888's (for VIR 2 weeks ago) At first full tread/unshaved they were a bit greasy, but by the end of the day 3rd session they were getting GOOD. By the 3rd day they were absolutely amazing grip wise but as I really started getting faster I felt a little push and not as much initial bite as the day/sessions before, but these were new so no way that could be from the tires, it was probably pressure since the driving got way more aggressive. I just ran Auto x with them yesterday in 30 degree temps, with my GT2 and monsterous power it felt stable and controlled, not much wheel spin at all and especially when they heated up the tiniest amount, I was shocked!

Interesting to hear though about your shaved R888 experience, I hear they last longer shaved and provide better grip, but I guess not. I'll just drive it for a bit on the street and that will be like shaving it down a little bit

mooty

JR, glad you posted that. i had the same exp., but thought it was just my own driving problem.

i had used up 30+ sets of RA1 in various sizes, and cars from lotus to miata to bmw, cayman s, boxxster s, gt3, RS, C2s... RA1 are faster when shaved as you all know.

i am on my 4th set of R888. and they are at their best (for me at least) when brand new full tread. i ran hoosier this past weekend, granted it's my first time on hoosiers. i was able to match my hoosier times with new full tread R888!

when R888 gets old, 20 HC or so (not yet corded) they are pretty bad compared to RA1 with 20 HC.

i plan to get more hoosiers to compared against R888. i really dont think R6 is much faster than new full tread R888's.

earlyapex

John,

Do you toss them after 20 HC?

jrgordonsenior

My experience is only with a Boxster and may not be relevant to any other model. I would definitely try out the R888's, only in full depth tread. The difference is only 2/32nd's.....

M758

We in 944 spec just started using the R888's. As such nobody has worn down a set of these tires. Our experience on RA-1 however was that they would start slow (shaved or not) then get good for long solid number of cycles then cycle out at 30+ heat cycles depending on how hard you ran them. The top guys could get the best times from the RA-1 just before the cycled out.

The R888 we believe will need a slightly different hot pressure setting so it will be interesting to see how they work out. I don't believe any of us will be changing our suspension settings for the R888. Our cars are alreadly fairly softly sprung. I guess there could be a change in camber in order for these tires, but we will need to put more time on them to really understand. The thing we are going to be fooling with is tire pressures. The RA-1s seemed to work best at 38-39 hot. Right now the thinking is the R888 will need to be 1-2 psi higher. One of Arizona's top drivers just got a set of R888's and will start testing these to see how they run. He got them unshaved has 2-3 heat cycles on them so far.

Again these is for the 225/50 R15 (7" wheel) size used on 2600-2650lbs 944's with only 135 or so whp and about 350-400lbs spring rates.

jrgordonsenior

Jim Marks, one of our top 944 drivers, tried a shaved set of R888's this past weekend too and told me they were awful. You should write him for specifics, but he said the full depth tires were much stickier....

MarkPcar

Nice job!!

I will be at Infineon April 12 & 13, come on up.

earlyapex

Some comments from The Race Site.

http://www.theracesite.com/index.cfm...mag_id=15013_3

Tire wars  who won?

Obviously in Touring Car the RealTime Acuras seemed to be better prepared and adjusted to the new tires. Witnessed by the reduced lap times not everyone is fully comfortable with the new Toyo R-888's but that can only be expected.

The Rolex Grand-Am series shifted from Hoosiers to Pirelli tires and the series and teams did significant testing prior to the Rolex 24 and yet still many teams were still fine tuning their cars to the new rubber throughout the week at Daytona.

Given that I think you will see the lap times start to come down and be closer if not surpass the times set last season as the teams adjust to the new Toyos.

But don't expect the process to be without at least a little bit of pain and suffering.

"We are having to rework our suspension around the tires," said Seth Thomas of BimmerWorld. "They are a lot different than the RA-1s so the lap times don't reflect how good they really are right now but as the season goes along and we get more and more used to these tires you are going to see cars get faster.

"They were similar to having the same characteristics of one lap, get out there, get it done and come in. And that was happened today."

Another issue is the question as to how well the tires will last for a full race as the GT teams had a lot of questions going into the Sebring race.

"We haven't done a long run on the R-888 Toyo tires as yet so we don't know for sure how well they will hold up for a full race," said Michael Galati before the start of the Sebring GT race. "It is one of those deals where we will have to take care of our tires and see how things work out because it will be very important at the end of the race to have your tires underneath you. It is a whole new game!"

"It is the first race of the season and there are a lot of question marks that are soon going to be answered when it goes green tomorrow," agreed Randy Pobst

The bad news for the GT teams was that they got no answers at Sebring as the race was totally wet and nothing was learned about the longevity of the R-888's on a hot race track.

While the Touring Car race did go green for the duration and most teams didn't indicate a huge problem with the tires going off there were some concerns.

Peter Cunningham for one noticed that the harder he worked the Toyos, particularly on the concrete, the slower he went.

"I tried not to grind them coming out of the corner," said Cunningham. "I noticed that if I worked them hard they would go off a bit bur if I didn't go as hard coming out of the corners they would come back."

For race winner Pierre Kleinubing he liked the new Toyos just fine saying, "The new tires stayed consistent throughout the race. I was able to run the last lap and the first lap at the same pace."

JC3D

That was some great racing John. I qualified right behind you on sunday but couldn't race because my second racer clinic is in April. I look forward to being on track with all of you guys.

iLLM3

Why do you suggest going a bit higher for the R888's?? I ran 28 cold all around on my GT2 at VIR with new R888's, well this was after trial and error and found 38 hot felt the best?!

M758

I was talking with our Toyo race tire dealer. He said that you needed to make sure you did not roll over the triangle on the edge of the tire. This is the triangle used to show where the wear bars are. If you run over the edge of the sidewall to much it is bad for carcass of the tire. One of our top 944 spec racers was with us for this discussion and he had run the R888 at lower presure the day before. So he upped the pressure a bit and his car seemed to be a little better. Even so it was really too early to say if this is the right thing to do our not. We did come to the conclusion that while we had the RA-1's figured out for the 944 spec cars, the R888 would need some time to play around with things before we found their sweet spot on our cars. I would expect this playing around to take us the rest of the 2008 season. I can only guess by 2009 we will have the tire figured out. The good news for us however is that this sorting time will mean those still running RA-1's will not be at the same disadvantage as we might otherwise be. I have 2 sets of RA-1's to burn through and a set of unshaved R888 I will be getting this weekend. I probalby won't run the R888 this weekend. I might in May, but I may hold off even longer. My RA-1's will last me through 08 and I am getting the R888's for my 3rd set of wheels since I toyo bucks I needed to use up. The toyo bucks mean the set of R888 is pretty much free.