New Tire Day!

Sorry, but the Haas F1 team did NOT sign any NMS drivers this year. The real story is that there were two of these vans at York Technical College, and the Haas guys were installing some new Haas machines in the building next to the auto shop. 

As I was prepping for an upcoming autocross event, I noticed some worn out spots on my one year old Michelins tires that went right through the tread. Having solid tread all around all 4 tires is kind of important and adds to safety, so it was time for some new tires! I took a look at the last few years of tire wear data from the NMS Tire Engineering and Factual Database (TEFD) to see what insights to faster driving could be determined, and made this shocking discovery: Driving your car on track and autocross events WEARS OUT YOUR TIRES!

The NMS Racing Safety Department head ruled this tire was too worn to take on track again. Thanks for the memories. 

In five years of driving the Cayman, the NMS TEFD has been analyzing the data on each set of tires, looking for any critical information that will improve the team's performance. While the team finance department has not pulled the trigger to authorize full on racing slick tires because they "cost too much money," the team has been using tires in the 200-340 treadwear range, and they are cheaper than the 40-100 treadwear tires. As a lowly driver I'm not sure where all that saved money goes, but apparently things like "brake pads" and "gas" aren't getting any cheaper either!

Here's a look at a Tire Pressure Monitor inside a tire. They are easy to replace when their battery goes bad. 

This set of Michelins lasted for 3,432 total miles of driving, which included 63 autocross runs, two Track Night in America events, and two days of driving on track at Carolina Motorsports Park. While a few thousand miles is not a lot of driving for an everyday tire, being on track and doing autocross events is not your everyday turning and braking. 

At the tire shop I spotted this huge Mickey Thompson 37 inch tire for a Jeep. 

Before the Michelin tires, NMS-North was running a set of Yokohama Advan A052 tires, and they only lasted for 1690 miles, with 28 autocross runs, and 2 days on track. These tires have a treadwear rating of 200, and a reputation for being fast, but based on how quickly they lost tread, I'm thinking they aren't worth it since they lasted a good bit less than the Michelins. 

Somebody better get those wheels out of the truck and onto the car. 

Prior to that there was another set of 200 treadwear tires, from Falken. These tires seemed to get faster the more the tread wore down. Racers say that this can happen when you're evenly wearing the tread and slowly turning them into slick tires! The NMS team mechanic suspects that this is the reason I was the fastest car at a couple of events in 2023, but of course those mechanics don't want to give any credit to the driver! They seem to think it's all about the car! The Falkens lasted 4,767 miles, which included 89 autocross runs but no track days. I'll guarantee that a track day wears out more tires than autocross, due to much more braking. 

One good reason to have a small truck: NEW TIRE DAY!

Still in the 200 treadwear range, we had a set of Hankook RS4 tires before the Falkens too. The Cayman managed to last 6,054 miles, which includes 84 autocross runs, and 9 HPDE track days. These Hankooks have a great reputation for lasting a long time, even if they aren't the absolute fastest tires on track. Based on our experience, they lasted a long time, and are a great buy for the price.