I’m not super familiar with Vegas but those look decent to me. No big feathering to indicate sliding though the fronts look a tad more grainy than the rears which could indicate either over driving corner entry or understeer.
Nothing is really jumping out as being significantly wrong with the tires. The wear for the rears looks normal, and your pressures are in the right ballpark for single speed applications (if KZ I’d go a little lower, more like 8-9psi but it also depends on the track). To me the sidewalls on the Vegas feel really soft so you could even play around with bumping the pressures up if you feel the tire rolling over at all.
In my experience with these tires, they tend to come in very quick and feel great in the first heat cycle, then around the second heat cycle performance can drop off fairly dramatically. Obviously this can be exasperated with overdriving or excessive sliding - moreso than with other tires I use - but luckily these ones seem like they haven’t been abused based on your pictures. Just don’t be surprised if you see your times drop a half second or more over your next couple of sessions. This might also be track dependent, but that’s been my experience with Vega greens.
Thanks guys!! Glad to hear they don’t look as “grainy” (correct term?) as I thought.
Should have mentioned, KA100.
On hot pressures, do the tires reach a threshold like cars do? On a car any driver who can wheel the car will gain about 10 psi from cold to hot. As long as you are driving consistently and not sliding around they reach a that point and don’t grow any further.
Or, will they reach the same hot psi (approx) just take longer to get there from a lower starting point.
Watching a ton of Kart Chaser coverage I hear quite frequently “his tires came on faster, he must have started with higher pressures”.
The only time we bump pressures in a car is for quali on stickers. If you don’t nail your time on lap 2/3 you build past target and run around on over pressured junk. Not something you would do for a race, so I wonder about ppl doing it in a kart race.
And I am sure I am overdriving at least a little. After I knocked all the big time chunks off and got consistent and more comfortable I am guilty of looking for time through pushing a little too much over being smooth. Need to work on that.
Both front and rears look like they grained due to being brought up to temperature too fast. Surface being dry and sandy indicates very green track and lack of grip.
Vega’s have 2 laps in them when new, after wich they will stabilize at around 2/4 tenths slower for the following sessions depending on track conditions and configurations.
They need to be brought up to temperature gradually. In a qualifying scenario this would look like one slow outlap, one lap at 75% load in corners and the third and fourth full load.
You should aim for 0.90 BAR hot on a green track, and 0.85 with grip for the XH4.
Same thing in karts. The tire temps/pressures will eventually plateau unless you are completely overdriving or the kart is handling poorly. Typically you are going up on tire pressure for quali in a kart as well or using that to control the tire temp on a longer run.
