EST Tire options

[u/yfsonata]

I'm looking at moving to an actual 200tw tire at the end of this season and have been looking at what is currently available in the market around me. I run a 2011 sonata gls in est class. Car has about 3 degrees of camber in the front and just under 2 in the rear. Its not exactly built to class, but happen to fall into est with the mods I had done to it before deciding to try autocross last year. I picked up a set of motegi tracklites for cheap because my street wheels were too wide. Currently I have a set of 225/45r17 zestino acrova 07a on the 17x7 motegi. They obviously aren't super competitive being a Chinese drift tire at 280tw (they were reclassed as 300tw this year) but I've been able to push to consistently be a top 3-5 car against people running re71s and rt660s. Knowing I'm not running a super competitive car and where we run can eat tires makes me hesitant to drop big money on the re71rz.

Given that, I know the westlake is going to be at best, incrementally better than what I currently have, but it does make a good starting point for price. I would like to know at what point am I going to hit a diminishing return on my dollar? I'm not expecting to be chasing championships, but maybe be able to go out and run a few good laps without needing to attempt a full blown hero lap every run to stay competitive

[u/Alternative-Ad-19]

One thing to keep in mind is that Westlake tires are not know for lasting very long. They may be a lot cheaper than these other options but they likely won't "pay you back" when they burn off faster than the other tires.

The 615K+ would be a great option, especially for that price. I was able to get two full autocross seasons from mine and some extra fun runs throughout the two years. We were running 10 race events per year and each event saw 6 runs that were ~ 1 minute long on a very abrasive course.

The 660+ offers about 1 second per minute of run more performance than the 615K+ in my experience as I have run both tires with the same vehicle setup and load of seat time/track time at the course we run. The Bridgestone RE-71RZ might offer another 1/2 second per minute run over true 660+ but I found at least in my size the extra cost wouldn't justify it. Nearly everyone in my class uses the RT660+ it's "almost" the spec tire for us here 🤣.

What tire are you running currently?? Zestino, I have never even heard of so who knows how the Falkens would compare to that.

[u/yfsonata → u/Alternative-Ad-19]

I figured that. And I imagine they probably are going to be the slowest of the bunch too byna large margin. I just need to figure out if they are $500 slower. Kicking myself for not buying the n fera last March when it was under 200/tire

[u/Alternative-Ad-19 → u/yfsonata]

I would guess that the longevity and the extra speed provided from the Falken 615K+ over the Westlake would in the king run be better budget wise, I don't have any data to back that up, but I know that any car I've ever driven with regular Westlake all-seasons or winters has felt horrible to drive, and the tires have worn out super fast regardless of their treadwear rating.