How many miles are you getting out of your RA-1s? I'm on my second or third set, and even with swapping them at least once, I've cupped and corded the fronts in less than 4,000 total miles, less than 1,000 of which were track miles.

Is this all I should expect?

(I don't have a tow vehicle or even a tire trailer, so my track tires get highway miles. But for the last few long trips, I've carried two of the track tires/wheels on the passenger's seat and drove to/from the track with two RE040s, just to reduce the mileage on the RA-1s.)

If you're getting better wear, how do you do it? My car's bone stock.

Another question: I'm thinking about going to 275/35s all the way around with the next set. Since I have two full sets of Track wheels, is there any reason not to use the rear 8.5-inch wheels all around?

Thanks.

 

From what I've seen I think that's all you can expect.

Granted my sample set isn't as big as yours. I've "commuted" about 500 miles and run about 400-450 miles on the track over 4 days this season on full tread RA-1's and they're roughly 40% gone. I'll project 9-11 days out of them, and consider that acceptable wear for an R tire. The Yokohama AO32R H compound will give you better wear at the expense of lots of road noise and higher lap times. I suggest mooching a little trailer space from a fellow driver who hauls his own car/tires. A case of beer may help sway the jury too....

Go for the 8.5's and same size tires unless your club rules dictate bone stock for your class. You can rotate all around to stretch a little more life out of them.

 

I've had over a year and half on my RA-1's! I've had so many days on them I've lost count, but if I had to guess I would say about 30 days. I usually drive them to and from the track and sometimes get lazy and leave them on for a week at a time and commute on them. I drive them hard for 4 sessions a day. I am a firm believer in doing a good warm up lap and cool down lap. I also have an optimized alignment. I flipped them on the rims half way through their life and rotate front to rear when I notice that one end has more tread. As far as I know, toyos are one of the longest lasting R compound tires out there. They last about 50% longer than kumhos.
The hoosiers I am waiting to put on will only last me 6-8 days I'm guessing.

 

30 days?! That's crazy, you sure they're not fossilized yet? For what it's worth the Z06 guys report 3 days out of a set of Hoosiers. Nice.

 

I have 500 miles of track and about 300 miles of highway on mine. About 30% gone now, I’m not yet at the “shaving” mark.

I’ve been told that RA1 usually die of heat cycling instead of cording. They become useless for racing way before they run out of thread. I guess that doesn’t matter as much for us HPDE’rs.

Daveh’s comment about warm-up and cool down is very important to tire longevity.

4,000 miles sounds good for a street driven R tire.

 

An asterisk to my claim is that my first 10 events were on stock shocks and I wasn't pushing the car as much as I did with my konis because the car was scary. Now that I am down to no tread, I have less stick. My lap times are 2 seconds slower to what they were 3 months ago so they've definately fallen off. I think realistically, I can get 20 days out of them with rotation. My wear is perfectly even across the tread.

 

About 10-12 track days until they're heat-cycled out for me. At that point, they're still rubber available, but on track the traction characteristics are inconsistent and slick.