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I don't know how the fuck some of these guys do back to back days. I ride hard on Saturday and I don't think my legs could take another day. But damn! The weather couldn't have been better. Sunny, upper 70s and low humidity.
There were 2 tires vendors there this weekend along with Velociy Calibrations. MTD had their Perelli setup, and across from my garage was Turn One Racing with Dunlop and Bridgestone. I had velocity read my tires. They had one day on them and he said there doesn't seem to be any setup issues, but his first question "are these feeling greasy". Turns out, I've progressed enough that I'm overheating the street rubber. I went over to T1R and told them what I was running and asked what the next step was. I've always like Dunlops, and we talked about all the options they had available. I agreed a full on slick was going to be overkill and not economical. I thought about it, and although the Q3s weren't close to worn out, after a couple more sessions I decided to upgrade. I ended up with Bridgestone R10. The Evo in the rear to maintain the 180. Type 4 (soft) front and Type 2 (hard) rear. Holy shit! There's a big difference between race rubber and street rubber. Street rubber is good and sticky... to a point. Also, the carcass performs differently. I'm still not fast enough, nor do I have enough exposure to compare and contrast tires. All I know is there's an obvious threshold. Once you start flirting with it, you'll plateau in speed and lean angle. Race tires before that will under perform the expectations, and after that, street tires can't maintain performance.
So, that's what I learned this time out. I haven't check my lap times yet, but I felt really strong and was hanging on longer to guys that were walking away from me 4 weeks ago. I call that a win.
There were 2 tires vendors there this weekend along with Velociy Calibrations. MTD had their Perelli setup, and across from my garage was Turn One Racing with Dunlop and Bridgestone. I had velocity read my tires. They had one day on them and he said there doesn't seem to be any setup issues, but his first question "are these feeling greasy". Turns out, I've progressed enough that I'm overheating the street rubber. I went over to T1R and told them what I was running and asked what the next step was. I've always like Dunlops, and we talked about all the options they had available. I agreed a full on slick was going to be overkill and not economical. I thought about it, and although the Q3s weren't close to worn out, after a couple more sessions I decided to upgrade. I ended up with Bridgestone R10. The Evo in the rear to maintain the 180. Type 4 (soft) front and Type 2 (hard) rear. Holy shit! There's a big difference between race rubber and street rubber. Street rubber is good and sticky... to a point. Also, the carcass performs differently. I'm still not fast enough, nor do I have enough exposure to compare and contrast tires. All I know is there's an obvious threshold. Once you start flirting with it, you'll plateau in speed and lean angle. Race tires before that will under perform the expectations, and after that, street tires can't maintain performance.
So, that's what I learned this time out. I haven't check my lap times yet, but I felt really strong and was hanging on longer to guys that were walking away from me 4 weeks ago. I call that a win.
