Looking at new tires

[— kung fu jesus —]

I'm researching and shopping new tires for my dual-use car. I have one set of tires and wheels. I do 4-6 HPDEs/year and this is my cheap DD/toy car. I only do one set of tires and wheels for a variety of reasons; simplicity, learning tool, apples-to-apples self-education. Frankly, as a staff member and instructor at HPDEs, I don't have a lot of time to swap tires, brakes, and rotors around at the events. It may seem like a compromise, but I look at at it as translating my track time to street driving because I'm using the same brakes and tires I use everyday. It also helps me keep things "real" as wanting to return home at the end of the day intact.

I have used a lot of different "extreme" performance tires over the years. They are usually "200 treadwear" tires. Awesome grip, but I've found them a bit dicey on the street in wet conditions, needing a lot more attention and margin to keep safe in traffic. For this, I was looking at "Max performance tires", with usually have a higher tread wear rating and fare a bit better in the rain, though sacrificing at overall grip. I am shopping a 205/50-15.

I was looking at various sites, reading a lot of reviews, narrowing my choices and budget. I noticed something while reading test results on the Tirerack site. They tested both categories last year, on the same car, same tire size, about two weeks apart. That's some valuable apples-to-apples comparisons. I took a little time to take their test graphs from both categories and placed them side by side. It's really interesting to me. It helps me to determine a bit of value for my concerns and compromise.