Spotted on FB and ekartingnews.com today. First sets of tires expected to arrive in November 2023.
Full Throttle Karting and FTK Promotions will welcome Shinko Racing Kart Tires to be utilized for Challenge of the Americas championship series in 2025 and beyond. The Shinko Prime and Shinko SHS63 ‘Performance’ compounds will be run the upcoming season, which kicks off on January 31-February 2 at the Musselman Honda Circuit in Tucson, Arizona.
Full details on EKN:
I hope their kart tire quality is better than their off road tires. I still use them because their initial grip is good but side knobbies come off for the rocky technical type riding i do. I assume a mild price war could happen in such a small market as karting tires.
No pricing yet which is a pity, you’d hope to see the retail price in that sort of announcement.
Price wars seems to be few and far between for kart tires. Especially for imported ones as the shipping can almost make up half of the cost.
Both Vega and Shinko are being shipped in shipping containers…i would think the freight would be close in cost. Not sure about other brands.
Agree. That’s why I’m inferring that the opportunity for a price war is small.
Never heard of them. I’ll have to try and snag a set. Was going to try and run CotA next year.
A tire war of any kind would require a series that allowed more than one tire brand.
If there is any kind of price war it will be behind closed doors as if tire brands choose to push to be a series supplier. And even then, most of the bigger series have their own tire brand (or import a brand). SKUSA will always run Evinco, USPKS will always run MG, ROK will always run LeVanto, Rotax will always run Mojo. You’d be looking at club series and regional series for any changes and many of them just adopt a rule set from one of the bigger series.
What I do like is it seems like Andy is willing to import a harder tire to support the budget classes like Lo206. The Evinco blue/MG red is now too soft, the LeCont red is too soft and the LeVanto is just a LeCont red.
Any durometer readings shared for these compounds?
Looking at OTK buying Vega recently…
Are we sure?
Oppps forgot that, thanks for the reminder.
I just expected the LeVanto name to remain, but be made by Vega.
That’s a possibility, I suppose. I had assumed they would just switch to straight Vega as it’s a more recognized name.
So has anyone run this brand before stateside? Still sounds like something I would order off of Temu 
I’m not sure they’ve been much outside Korea until earlier this year. They got FIA homologated for 2024, was chosen as the spec tire for the ROK championship in the Philippines. Other than that I can only find them as the spec tire for Korean Karting Championships.
Shinko has been around in the motorcycle community in the US for a couple decades or so. They originally came out as a budget alternative to the big brands and had some quality issues. Where they found adoption was developing a good working drag tire that was DOT approved so all of the street racers ran it. It seems they worked through their quality control issues and have a full lineup now but I also haven’t been a part of that community for a long time to get feedback from riders.
So not a completely new company, or new to performance tires, but just new to kart tires.
How are Linglong tires related to Shinko tires?
Dumb joke about the name. Sounds like something I would buy off wish/aliexpress/temu.
Yeah I get it, the joke isn’t lost on me. But can we hold ourselves to a higher conversation 
