Auto-x last night on the road course. This was my first time driving on Azenis 615 and I was not impressed. In 8 years I’ve run a good variety of tires, and I have some solid favorites that I would gladly buy again. In the case of the Azenis, I was looking for a fast tire that I could drive rain or shine, on the track and on the street. Past experience in mind, I would have picked the Advan A032R. Not a really fast tire, compared with other R designated tires, but a solid rain tire, and one with forgiving characteristics (which is prime for going really fast). The Yokohama name though… is not cheap. So when I came across Azenis at STRD for significantly less dollars than the Advan I thought they would be worth a try. The Azenis is afterall… the tire of choice for most FD drivers and dominates SCCA solo 2 street tire classes.
But I don’t get it. A big part of being able to drive fast, is confidence that the car will act consistently, and with these tires I felt as if I was driving a whole new car every single run. This was not my beloved 86 by any means. Braking points seemed to move all over the place. Sometimes I got good bite on turn in, and other times not at all. I had a lot of fun, in pure curiosity of what might happen, but it was not fast, and at the end of the night I was very frustrated.
I feel like I’ll have to play extensively with vehicle settings to get things right. I stopped at the gas station on the way in to make sure I had lots of air in my tires so that I could use the pyrometer and bleed down to what I deemed the “right” pressure. I figured 40psi would be safe. After all, the most pressure I can recall running, was in my 712’s, at about 34/37psi on a dry hot day. In fact, we used to run V700’s under 30 pounds. Last night however, although I bled the rears down to 37psi, the fronts were calling for a lot more than even 40psi.
Pyrometer readings looked something like 95/84/101 degrees. Absurd. Of course… I noticed to late that the 615’s are rated all the way up to 51psi. Next time I’ll come with 50pounds.
After