Now with craquelure!
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Fresh stickers for qualifying will give you the best opportunity to use the tires performance advantage. You’re wasting that potential in warmups. You also personally need to be able to make use of that tire advantage by being able to drive harder into braking/corner entry to use the extra grip.
Of course this comes with tons of caveats, such as this situation works when you’ve already got your setup close or dialed in, and know the track you’re racing on. If you’re new to the track and/or did your setup based on 15 HC tires then the setup will be off when you put the new rubber on. If you’re still figuring out which way to turn for half of the course then new rubber isn’t going to be a huge benefit.
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Great answer thank you!
In 206, I have found after a single HC MG Reds/Yellows and Greens will perform better. The initial HC takes 5-6 laps before temps become high enough to get performance out of the tire. In that time, you might get a single decent lap in 206. I suggest a HC prior to qualifying as they come alive alot sooner with the linited Power of a 206. I am sure every other motor that makes power doesnt suffer from this issue.
Is there anything you do differently on the first heat cycle on a fresh set?
I’ve always wanted to try doing a break-in heat cycle of kart tires like is recommended for most car racing tires. 3-4 laps of progressively gaining speed until running about 75% and then let rest for a full 24 hours. But I’ve never had a good way to test that outcome without potentially giving up a qualifying advantage to try it out.
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Imagine employing this strategy and then popping a chain on lap one in qualifying, or dipping a tire on your flyer 
I’d just run stickers and if you’re lacking a tenth or two in qualy it’s nothing a good old fashioned dive bomb can’t fix in the pre-final 
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we used to do this when were on the DFH dunlops - bed the tyre in first practice session on friday, wrap and put away until quali on Saturday. didn’t necessarily make them faster for quali but the tyre deg seem to be less session to session
12 races on 1 set including practice sessions? or do you have a separate practice set?
This was a couple of seasons ago but I think there were 1 or 2 practice days. Race day for us is 2 sessions of practice, 1 - 5 min practice / transponder check, 5 min qualifier, and a 15 lap prefinal followed by a 15 lap final. In hind site that was too many. plan on 2 sets a season.
I’m going to try 2 sets for a whole season and just run used tires from other racers that have more expendable income than me 
I have a couple of questions here. As I understand it, the Evinco Blue is the equivalent of an MG Red, is it not? Similarly the Evinco Red is equivalent to the MG Yellow?
The reason I bring this up is that our Club they changed the TaG classes from a Evinco Red to an Evinco Blue that the KA100’s and LO’s run. The idea was the harder tire would last longer. I get it, but in TaG you have a little more power you can put down and the grippier tires felt a lot more hooked up.
Now I am dealing with not only less overall grip, but also it taking longer to build heat in the tire for it to come in. I have asked around the grid and found a wide range of starting pressures from the 11-12 psi all the way up to 16-17 psi. On the old Evinco Reds I could start anywhere between 9-12 psi depending on the track temps and come off track between 14-15 psi.
My first thought was to go up on pressures a psi or two and that seemed to work, but took about 6-8 laps for the tires to fully come in. Not that bad for a long main, but not good for Qually or a shorter Heat Race. Since then I will typically start out even higher in Qually, slightly lower for the Heat and lower still for the Main. Maybe 0.5 - 1.0 psi changes. My goal is to get them to come in around lap 3 or 4 and last until the end. I have only noticed them falling off at the end of a long main when I did not lower them from a shorter Heat. Some of that could be a result of really high track temps (it is North Texas in the middle of Summer). I did invest in a set of MXC’s to see if they help with the longer runs to regulate over heating the tires, but have not had a chance to test them yet. I have only done two races with these since coming off of the Evinco Reds. During the opening laps I find myself sliding around excessively until the tires come in, then the grip is manageable, but not great.
Just a few reference points: NTK, highs in the 100+, asphalt track with rhino lining in the hairpin at the end of long straight and myself and the kart weigh in at around 405 lbs give or take. The fasted guy in our group weighs in around 355 lbs and runs his pressure near or the same as I do. the second fastest guy weighs closer to what I do and runs the higher pressures I mentioned along with his wife that comes across the scales around 350 and she is quick too.
Any thoughts? Should I just play around with the pressures and see what works and what doesn’t? Any target Hot Pressures I should be aiming for?
Boy, switching to Evinco Blues for X-30 doesn’t seem like a good match, regardless of what it might do for improving wear. Not sure that wear is of concern, as I don’t think the Reds fell off in the Main and if most of the drivers buy new every week, then I can’t see the advantage of having X-30s on Blues.
I do believe that the TaG-125 Red’s switched on quicker than Blue’s on a TaG-100. When I ran TaG-125, new Red tires would work in Green-White-Checker qualifying but when I moved to TaG-100 with Blues I couldn’t always get them to swtich-on during qualifying. With the Blues I would break in tires during the morning practice and run a bit higher tire pressure (1 or 2 psi) than a race for qualifying. Just one word of caution the qualifying format (Green-White-Checker or ??) will influence tire strategy and generally I’m a crappy qualifier. There were lots of guys that could make the Blues work in qualifying. As always in karting YMMV!
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Thanks Larry. I sort of found that out the hard way my first time on them. Its so hot here in the summer that they have been going Green flag at 10 am. The track has barely started to gain temp and my first time out on the Blues I was skating around all over the place. Qually for us is 5 minutes and at around 40 sec/lap you get about 5 or 6 laps before the checker. After Qually I quickly went up on the pressures like 2 psi. By the Heat race the tires were feeling a lot better, but still didn’t want to come in until lap 4 or 5 and it was only 8 laps long. Did you try running at the higher end? Like 16-17 psi cold? I am so temped, but don’t want to blow race session experimenting. Especially a longer one that is harder to recover from.
X30 on Blues is out of my realm of experience. I can tell you though with the KA100 I usually run 10 +1,-.5 psi with the tires in the sun when it’s hot and the track is grippy. The 16 or 17 psi cold seems crazy high. At that pressure I would think the tires would get greasy and start sliding after 1 lap.
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I think your thought process here is on the right track. I would continue to experiment until you feel like you have a good mid-run baseline (session length similar to your heat races), and then don’t be afraid to go up 2psi or more to get the tires to work quickly in qualifying.
I’d be curious what your lap time progression looks like throughout each session. Are you knocking off tenths at a time, or hundredths at a time leading up to your fastest lap? Are you running multiple laps at fastest lap pace? Is there any noticeable drop-off after your fastest lap? All of these will help inform where your starting pressures should be.
I have limited experience with the MG Red/Evinco Blue, but would offer the following observations. Generally when running a heavier weight, e.g. Masters weight (~400 lbs) vs. Senior (~360), the higher weight will require you to run slightly higher tire pressures (0.5-1.0psi). Also, the MG Red seems to have a wider working pressure range, as I’ve heard of front runners in the same class running as much as 3 psi different from one another. Based on the track conditions you’re describing, I would expect 12psi to be a good starting point, and then experiment from there.
You may want to try playing around with some chassis setup tweaks to help the tire come in more rapidly, but without compromising your long run pace.
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