I got in late last night from the 3 race weekend, and time is tight this morning, but I'll give a quick synopsis and expand later as I can get the time.

Both tires were fresh & shaved to 3/32nd's to give each their best shot. The two fastest drivers in teh region used them over the weekend.

Times were within 1/10 second for one driver 3/10's for the other, one favoring the RA-1, the other the R-888 (time wise. Both drivers preferred the RA-1. One issues that was worse than expected is the look. The RA-1's are much narrower, and look as though your running late-offset wheels on an early offset car. Several comments were made by racers and spectators about this. Pics to come.

how did this impact the gearing and gear selection.

"better a smokin hole than look bad" US Navy fighter pilot

At this track, all the corners were taken int he same gear. There was one spot where the rev limiter came into play for 3-4 cuts with the RA-1, but not the R-888's I still did not need to use 5th at this track with the shorter tires. I'll dig into the Traqmate data later.

The 205 do look puny...


I guess we all know the RA-1 is a great tire. However the issue with R888 that drives us is mostly life.

How long will a 205 last vs a 225 is part of the issue. My concern is due to width the 225 last longer and thus any bit long the RA-1 lasts would be overshawed by the narrower width. SM are lighter than us. E30's are heavier...

So it would be nice to have an idea of life of 205 RA-1 vs 225 RA-1. I am sure you have some information on the 225 RA-1's someplace right?

joepaluch wrote:


Your concern has merit, but also keep in mind that R888's tend to "cycle out" long before they run out of tread. I tested 2-3 year old RA-1's vs 9 month old R888's at PPIR this weekend, both in 225/50-15... The RA-1's were badly abused, never shaved, unevenly worn, had at least 30 heat cycles on them, somewhere around 20 spins, and were noticeably a little heavier than the R888's. They were so trashed that the tire shop didn't want to mount them for me. The R888's had right around 20 heat cycles on them, I had driven them nicely, rotated them regularly, etc.

I ran the trashed RA-1's on Saturday, qualified on pole, and won the qualifying race. I made a dumb mistake during the main race and got passed by nearly our whole field plus plenty of other classed cars, but I was still able to get back up to 6th, literally 3 inches away from taking 5th, in the few minutes remaining in the race. All in all, it was a pretty good day.

I figured that my R888's would be faster since they were in much better condition, newer, a little wider, and lighter. That's what I was planning to use at Nationals, so I put them on Sunday to get more practice on them. I went out for qualifying and immediately felt the lack of grip... It was like I was on ice skates through the high-speed banked turn, and like I was driving on gravel through the in-field. I had to take a different line through some of it because I was on the verge of spinning if I didn't.

I still managed to qualify 2nd, but my laps were consistently about a second slower than the previous day. I forgot to put my hood pins in, so the hood flew up on the pace lap and I ended up starting the race 3/4 of a lap behind. Despite having a 40 minute race, I was only able to catch a few 944's. My lap times were again around a second slower than the previous day's race, and I felt like I was on the edge of traction the whole time.

My alignment is setup for R888's, not RA-1's, and my driving style favors R888's as well, but the RA-1's were still the clear winner. The good news is that the R888's didn't really get any worse for me during that 40 minute race... I didn't have much traffic for the last few laps, and that's when I set my fastest lap of that race.

I would believe that new or near-new R888's are stickier than the ones I have, but there's just no doubt that even the worst condition RA-1's are faster than moderately worn R888's. So, R888's are more expensive because the tread wears faster PLUS they lose their stickiness after only a few weekends. And when we're also considering a size change, there's the fact that 225/50-15 Toyo's cost a lot more than 205/50-15, especially recently.

I'll take a 205 RA-1 over a 225 R888 any day. Even if they were to wear faster, they're still cheaper and better, plus they're easier to find used. R888's just don't make any sense for our class, and Toyo seems to be trying to get rid of our 225/50-15 size with their latest prices, so 205/50-15 RA-1's seem like a pretty good plan for the 2010 season. Or, we just forget Toyo's entirely...