All-Season Tire Class - Poll

[twistedwankel]

I once saw a guy take a fun run on his trailer fit/paddock narrow tires that were older than Moses. He was still FTD in spite of driving on skinny stones in his road race 914 with tiny motor. So in my mind car prep, weight and driver skill will still be the deciding factors in this class more than the tires. Like usual.

I'm thinking manufacturer limited cheap "spec tire" again to keep the playing field level. I also see frequent tire shaving. My AS tires came as 11/32" tread and were pretty good at autocross all the same with a ton of squirm and heat build. Great in the rain and got me my only AS tire sticker for 3rd in a downpour against several superior cars.

Devil's advocate:
So I'm new to the sport with a daily driver Yaris or just have a Fit (pun intended). The first 2-3 times I have a barrel of fun in S5. If I show up the 4th time I realize I'm no longer getting much faster and I finish DFL or worse but still enjoy flogging on my 80k OEM 600 green tires. I either get new cheap wide wheels and 200 tires to be sorta competitive or I keep it an occassional fun thing to do like driving rental carts on the gas money I saved driving my econobox. I hear of the small tire SH205 (shithouse) class and get all excited. I show up as usual on my regular OEM tires. I initially don't know who's in the SH class because most autocross cars fit that general description and FAST only uses numbers. After the first run I walk to the computer all smiles and see I'm still DFL by 3 or 4 seconds. Some alien redhead is driving a fat red Nissan on 205 F1 Raintyres and vying for FTD against Fred somebody on AS motorcycle rain tires. No one is running in MO at all. So I sign up for regular MO next event and get my 1st Place sticker running against myself. Success at last. I have finally beaten the system and I have a sticker to prove it.

See yall in May.
The Mayor

[Loren]

Meh. If people get joy out of running in an empty class to get a sticker, not much we can do about that.

Limiting tires to a manufacturer doesn't help. Every MFR has a variety of all-season tires, some good, some not-so-good. Limiting to a particular MODEL is impossible because we have people running everything from 13 to 18 inch wheels (really... we could potentially see 12 to 20). No single tire model covers that whole range, and not enough people will want to take this seriously enough to buy THE tire that we tell them to for this class. Besides, tire choice is just like any other aspect of car setup. It's part of the game. Will your car do better with the widest possible "205" tire with the grippiest known all-season compound, or would your car do better with a "195" that isn't as grippy, but weighs 3 pounds less? Your call. If your car is light and has great suspension, but not a lot of power, weight might be more important. (maybe) If your car is heavier and has (relatively) lots of power, you'll want all the grip you can get.

205 tires would surely be an improvement, but I can tell you that with 175's on a 1.6 Miata, I wasn't winning any classes. I wasn't finishing DFL, but I sure wasn't gonna take home any trophies!

[twistedwankel]

It's all about the sticker. Woohoo.

[vertigyn]

If adding a class for this, why not also add a class for the karts and open wheel cars to get them out of the normal car classes?

Perhaps force them into the "Fun" class so normal vehicles actually have a chance like you are trying to create here for all season tire wearing smaller underpowered cars

[Loren]

This is way off-topic for this thread, and I remember answering this question a few weeks ago.

Here is the answer.

We don't get enough race tire guys to support more race tire classes. And if there isn't enough interest in an All-Season class, we won't have it, either.

[Jeremy]

How about we organize classes according to lug pattern and then when you get to the event, we have a random drawing and everyone swaps wheels with each other. Spacers and baseball bats will be provided for clearance issues.

[Loren]

Bumping for more votes.

[BrilloHeadBen]

Honestly, I found doing the classic event on my daily tires to be extremely fun, though not necessarily fast. I'd be down for it at least as a classic event only class, if not, a regular class. It'll help some with the sticker shock of a new set of wheels and tires and still give them the chance of being competitive.

[WAFlowers]

I've never really had dedicated autoX tires, so I've never faced "the sticker shock of a new set of wheels and tires". I just ran what I was driving to work and the grocery store. Of course, when they wore out I'd replace them with one of the better extreme street tire!

I think an All-Season class would just fragment things too much.

Do as I did: drive what you brung then replace as needed with something more competitive when you can or need to.

Not that my vote counts; I think I "lost" my membership rights by not showing up for 2 years.

[Inspecta]

I like the idea.
I may be a loner though.

[Loren]

The poll is over, and interest is marginal at best. But, I also know that there are a couple of people who may be interested who didn't vote in the poll.

If you have serious interest in this idea for the upcoming season, please send me a PM. Josh is interested enough that he and I could possibly co-drive his car in this class. Would be a hoot! But, we really need more than two people to make a class.

[twistedwankel]

How about we organize classes according to lug pattern and then when you get to the event, we have a random drawing and everyone swaps wheels with each other. Spacers and baseball bats will be provided for clearance issues.

What ever happened to Jeremy? He used to be so involved.