So it all started back in September of 1998 when I first went to Firebird raceway and witnessed an autocross for the first time. I was very impressed by what I saw and decided that I'd give it a try the next time there was something going on. Well, quickly I destroyed my old Firestone tires on the track but not before becoming hopelessly addicted to the thrill of racing.

So, I decided to get some decent performance street tires for my car in the form of 195/60-14 Yokohama A509's. These tires are a very good improvement over the Firestone tires and served me very well for many months of racing and driver's schools. I was pretty satisfied with this, but around April I found out about events where you can just pay $100-150 or so and race your car around racetracks with no special equipment or anything needed.

This changed everything. I went on a buying spree and purchased a second set of wheels, Kumho V700 race tires, camera mount equipment, a jack, torque wrench, helmet, and a few other things too. Most important for this autocross however was the tires. I had originally purchased them just for the Open Track event at Buttonwillow Raceway, but I figured it was worth using them for an autocross just to see how I'd do.

Well, take a look at the picture at the top of the page. On the left is a fine example of one of the Firestone tires that comes stock with a Honda Civic. I have 4 of these in my garage which I'll probably use when my Yoko's wear out. As you can see, it's clearly a basic transportation design. The Yoko is shown on the right. It's about half worn, but you can see it's a bit wider and more aggressive than the Firestone. Right in the middle is one of my brand new, not even mounted Kumho V700's. It does not appear to be, but it's actually supposedly the same width as the Yokohama tire. In tread design though, it's obviously putting a greater percentage of rubber to the road. The rubber that does contact the pavement is also a much softer and stickier compound than is used for street tires.

So, it was time to put all the hype of R tires to the test. I had the tires mounted on my spare wheels, threw them in the trunk of my car along with my tools and took off for EFA late Saturday evening. The racing started around 7:30pm, so only the first run group really had any daylight. Since I ran in the last group of the night, I was one of the drivers who got to run under the cover of darkness. Since they had a few light towers around the track, it really wasn't all that different than running in the daytime.

The course design was notably tighter and shorter than usual, and the quickest times dipped in to the 39's. Typically I try to keep my car making peak power at all times, which means downshifting to 1st for tight corners in most cases. On one particular course, I downshifted to 1st three times in search of maximum power. Since this event wasn't for trophies, I decided to see what I could do just leaving the car in 2nd gear once I topped out in 1st. As it would happen, that meant going for 2nd gear shortly after the second turn.

For the most part this wasn't a real problem except for the tight right-hand turn after the first slalom. I probably could have picked up some time downshifting to first here, but there wasn't any good spot where I could execute the downshift so I just concentrated on the racing line and did the best with what I had.

Since this was the first time I'd used the tires, they were not really broken in, and should perform better after worn down to racing depth. As you can see from the first photo, the outer third of the tire has some shallow horizontal grooves. Well, once the tire's fully broken-in that becomes a slick and gives monster grip that makes spending $110 per tire worth it. Well, maybe not quite monster grip when the car in question is my stock Honda Civic, but it's an awfully grippy tire. So, without further needless banter, here's how it turned out.

My first lap out proved to be quite an eye-opener. After racing for around 7 months on street tires, logging approximately 100 autocross laps, I had become quite familiar with how my A509 street tires performed. This would allow me to walk the course a few times and just know what my car was capable of. With the Kumho tires I was learning my car's capabilities all over again. My first lap out was a 46.093 and it was no where near the limits. Normally my first lap is within a second or so of my best time but in this case it was far from being near my potential.

The next lap out I got a bit more aggressive and was able to trip the finish light with a 45.161 - almost a full second faster. This time I could feel that I was prodding at the limits, but I could also tell that the tires weren't making full grip since they were still no where near broken in. Next time I may look in to ordering my tires shaved so I can get peak performance right out of the box. If you look below this text, there should be a picture of one of my Kumhos after the hour and 20 minutes of abuse at Buttonwillow a week after the autocross (more on that in another section).

The third lap was again notably quicker; this time a 44.794 in spite of a major mistake coming out of the first slalom. There was surely room for additional improvement, although I was still having trouble getting used to the very high grip and abrupt break-away. The fourth and final run was a 44.218 with my tires still looking almost just as they did when they were shipped to me. There was probably a little room to go even quicker than I did, but as it turned out when the results were posted, a 44.218 was far and away the best time I've managed so far.

There were zero other entries in HS Open in this group, so I don't have a table showing how my times compared to the others in the class. It really would have been unfair anyway since usually the HS entries are on street tires. Greg Schupfer and his Corvair defected to the Street Tire II class where he expertly piloted his 1965 rear-engined car to a solid mid-pack finish. The Ricky Rudd-lovin` Heidi Kmetz didn't drive her Saturn at all, instead opting to try out the elder Kmetz's road racing prepared V8 Mustang. They both did pretty well, but the pure racing machine's lack of forward lighting and hefty size are more at home on the road courses than a dark Solo 2 track. As such, I managed to squeak by both Heidi and Mike Kmetz's times in my Kumho-shod Civic HX.

Once the final results were posted I felt even better about my finish. The top PAX time was set by Mark Huffman in his ASP Lotus Elan at 39.023 which translates into a PAX time of 33.248. My raw time of 44.218 is a PAX time of 34.711, so I only finished about a second and a half behind the top guy. This gives me a PAX percentage of 958, which absolutely shatters my previous best of 922. Also notable is that out of the 95 entries, I took 15th in PAX times overall. Sure, there's a lot of novices and street tire cars, but this is a huge improvement over previous events.

So, what next? Since there's no one left in HS Open, I could either stay there and win against nobody, race on my street tires in the street tire class, or get killed in the PAX class on my race tires. Since I really like the Kumhos, I see no reason in going back to racing on my street tires so that option's pretty much out the window. As for running in HS Open again, I might do it. PAX is certainly out since I have no chance of winning, and it would be extremely hard to even get a trophy place.

There is, however, a new "Sportsman" class being created this season. I'm not sure how it works, but if it's like PAX, but without all the top drivers in it I might have a chance. My guess is that the Sportsman class would be popular with all the other drivers on race tires who similarly have no chance or desire to run with the top drivers in PAX, so it might be just exactly what I'm looking for. The next race is September 12th, so we'll see what happens then.

For additional event information and signup forms, see the Arizona Region SCCA web site. If you'd like to see the complete event results for any of the races in the spring series, you can use the Results tool I wrote which has the complete results for all the races of 1999.

Page created: 8-1-99
This site maintained by Brandon Smith
Some text and information from results as posted by the Arizona Region SCCA.
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