I have a mk3 sport and looking for new tyres. current tyres are nankang ns2 205 45 17, im looking for grip, dont do many miles probably 5000 a year mainly in the dry, about 4 track days a year incoporated. im considering toyos 888 but they are expensive and wondering if i would have to replace after 1 or 2 track days or would they last a bit longer. would a set of t1rs offer a good alternative but how less grippy are they.
thanks Garry
Hi Garry, firstly don’t get confused, you are wanting NS-2R, the NS-2 is a totally different, and honestly, not very good tyre.
Any tyre you are going to use on 4 track days a year is not going to give you stratospheric mileage, however the NS-2R, particularly in the Street compound is a very durable tyre and should have no issue in completing your yearly requirement and some.
I have the original test set used at Oulton Park in April 2013 for BRSCC testing. They have been on the Mazda on Track SR2 car pretty much since then and I am about to fit them, only half worn to my wife’s MK1 road car that she has just bought. They also clear water well. They are not the ultimate grippy tyre, but then you do not want too much grip in an MX-5 as it does not have the power to go with it.
I would advise against the Toyo. My views on the T1R being an over rated tyre are well known. The swear filter won’t let me give you my full description, however, if you want a lower grip tyre the Kumho offerings are far better. You will get more wear than with the Nankang because the track work will cause more thermal degradation and I would not be confident you would get a full year’s use out of them. You are also not looking at a huge amount of additional cost. I would not expect you to get much past 12K miles even if you were just driving spiritedly on the road.
The R888 is another tyre which is outclassed by it’s peers. It will give you more ultimate grip than the Nankang but if you push it, it will go off quicker and suffer far greater wear. Again, I am not confident you would get 5,000 and 4 track days, in fact I would say not. The R888 was always a “budget” track tyre, however Toyo changed that 3 years ago, with substantial price rises and it is now exposed for that. It has a weak carcase construction and uses old organic oil rubber compounds, which do give it decent wet performance for the type of tyre, but there is much better for less money on the market.
The Nankang will cost you £95 in 215 45 17" A T1R is going to cost you the best part of that and just a 15" 888 will cost you lots more and you would replace them twice as often.
Nick
I asked Nick this same question.
I now have a set of Nankang NS-2R fitted on my Mk3 sport. Best thing I’ve done to the car
Thanks gents, NS 2r s it is then
One question has the Federal RSR been superceded by the Nankang NS 2 R or is the performance balance offered very similar?
The RS-R has variable quality and almost always develops a split across the tread. While we have no reports of this ever being a problem, it is none the less, undesirable. MOT testers will normally comment on it.
If you get a good set of RS-R they are about 0.6 of a second a lap faster round Donington in the try but about 1.8 seconds slower in the wet.
The Nankang will cope with water better and give you more immediate grip than a RS-R which is most definitely a quality you want i a road car as road driving does not generate the sort of heat in a tyre on the road that you do on the track.
Both are decent tyres, the Nankang is my choice, it does not split, has better wet grip, does not have issues about European or UK spec tyres. They are also durable and don’t seem to suffer the shoulder wear that RS-R’s do.
Thanks Nick, RSRs seemed to be all the rage last year probably why I’ve a set now sitting unused in the shed, as you say they’re not confidence inspiring when cold but I was impressed in the dry once you’d got them warm.
All of these type of tyres improve when warm, that is how they work, even in the wet.
All tyres are compromises. The most accessible demonstration of this is F1. Within the rules and regulations, those tyres are optimised to perform one task in a singular set of conditions. The slicks are not going to run in rain, or cold, they know the track surface to know the temperature rage, the pressures, everything. The softer or “option” tyre will give reduced lap times but at the expense of life.
And yet, even within this very rarefied world, different cars perform differently on the same tyre, some cars can’t get the grip that others do, some wear them out faster. Jensen Button is famously easy on his tyres due to his sooth driving style and not over working the tyre, asking it to compensate for entering the corner too fast and scrubbing off speed or jumping on the throttle early and asking it to work harder than it wants of needs. But again, even at this level, the tyre performance can very significantly due to temperature change, track temps drop and they expect slower times because the rubber won’t be as tacky and stretch as it will be being 10 degrees hotter.
It is exactly the same for road tyres and track tyres. There are wet biased road tyres, designed to give good wet grip, and while they will also perform well in the dry, just like F1, if you work them outside of their comfort zone, or design range, they suffer. We have probably all seen the “the wet tyres are now suffering because the track is drying and the tyres are over heating.”
Because we don’t have a pit crew who can change our tyres in two and a half seconds when ever conditions change, road tyres have to attempt to cover all bases. There still are preferences though, Wet bias tyres will be “softer” rubber and frequently have a greater tread void which means there is less physical rubber actually in contact with the road, which results in a higher contact PSI between the rubber and the road, giving it the good wet grip. In the dry this acts against it and push hard the smaller rubber area, bendy tread and softer rubber will heat far more an “burn” away more readily, even just in a straight line wear will be more than a “dry tyre.”
Track tyres are designed to run hotter and so only become soft like “normal” tyres at higher temperatures, which is why they don’t grip when they are cold.
Regarding the Nankang vs. Federal, it is not that the Nankang is the latest flavour, it is just for most people’s requirements for this type of tyre on a MX-5 it does the all round job better than the Federal. If you want the faster, dry, warm laps, the Federal is faster, if you have the typical inclement UK weather, the Nankang will cover more bases, if you can afford wet and dry track tyres or are happy to slow down more in the wet, then there are far faster dry tyres.
And then there is the cost and that is a whole different issue.
I had those splits across the tread on RS-Rs fitted to my road/track Impreza, didn’t cause a problem, but as you say it looks disconcerting!
NS2R’s do sound like a good compromise. Nick, I see you list soft and medium options - which would you recommend for a mixture of road and track use?
I think the medium is a better tyre than the soft.
I have NS2R’s (from Nick) in the medium compound and have used them on a couple of track days so far (one of them damp ish) and have to say I’m very happy with them.
I run the soft for road & track.
very grippy & also noisy.
How do you find the NS2r for road noise though? I’ve had them on a Twingo RS and an Ep3. They’re not as bad as the Avon ZZR, etc (for noise) but they’re much noisier than something like a PS4 or even an AD08R.
It’s a real shame they discontinued the AD08r, there was nothing that was as good an all rounder as that. The new AD08RS is not a patch on it.