In our national champtionship we race at a fairly high speed track that consumers our Mojo D5’s very quickly (its a clockwise track almost near all right turns so it really chews the lefts) , a brand new set would last only around 8-9 session without flipping tires. So i am wondering lately if its worth flipping tires during race week at some point (for example, after qualifying or heat 1), would that give me a bit more edge on the final race, or would it take too long to get used to the slide to scrub in the inside tires? would love to hear your thoughts! Thanks
Our track is mostly lefts and I have flipped tires on the rims and I have also swapped side to side. It does allow tires to last longer but I also notice it seems to take a session or two before the tire feels and performs as it should. With that, I would suggest doing this only after a race day so that you have the next race day warm ups to bring the tires in.
This gets asked a lot.
If flipping on the wheel, just make sure the tires are not too worn in before flipping, or the natural camber you’ve worn into the tire will really reduce your contact patch and grip when you flip the tire and are now riding on the shoulder more.
If flipping on the wheel I recommend doing it like halfway through the race day.
We do it because its cheaper than buying new sets. A couple of notes:
Works better on tires with rounder profile (because of this, it works better on fronts than rears, as well). We did it very succesfully on bridgestones, hoosiers, and now do it on MG Reds (a little less succesfully, but still worth it).
You will get much less life on the 2nd side than you got on first.
First full year racing regional series in LO206. The 6 regional and 1 national events we have done thus far scan the tires after quals and you are mandated to run them the entire race weekend. Some tracks aren’t very hard on rubber and I don’t know that it matters to swap side. For tracks with high load corners it certainly can make a difference by the end of the week to swap. We only have 1 set of MXCs, and I don’t flip the rubber on the rims.
If we ran higher horsepower, it might matter more, but we don’t…yet.
My local track where we run Rotax and D5’s is very similar - just with the main wear being on the right side, with lots of left and corners.
As you know, the D5 is a “directional” tire and the Rotax rules state that you have to run them in their intended direction. That means you can’t just swap the tires on the rims from side to side, you have to unmount and remount the tires on the rims to flip them. While this is more work (fortunately the Mojo’s are easy to mount compared to many tires), most people find it helps to do it at our track.
The best thing is probably to do it every session (assuming time permits). There is a “break-in” period every time, but it’s pretty minimal when they’re flipped regularly. The down-side to waiting until after a few sessions is that the “break-in” time seems longer. So I wouldn’t want to fun them one direction for Qualy, Heats, and Pre-Final, then suddenly flip them before a Final - you’ll struggle in the Final.
I think this is going to depend on the compound too. The tire has to “wear-in” to the camber profile before it really hooks up. On a hard tire, this is going to take a while… Softer tire it’s probably be good after 3/4 laps.