Older version likely won’t be legal anywhere so there’s no reason for them to produce more of them.
Clubs or local orgs may allow both compounds until stock dries up.
This sums up our dilemma headed into the season. Just jumped from 206 to KA. So we have no rears and they are getting harder to find. Also don’t want buy out old stock knowing they may not be legal at our first race at the end of Feb in New Orleans. Will order some through TSRS and fit at the track.
This is my expectation, especially if the old one does not have a performance advantage. I’ve reached out to my local series though since our first race is in a month. No answer yet. The local shop though (on site at the track) still has SH1s, or at least they did last week when I picked up a practice set.
Under normal circumstances it sounds like the new tire will be superior in pace to the old tire, especially in low-temp, low grip scenarios like first few races of the year?
Yes, that is very likely a true statement.
Pitt Race just announced this today - either compound is legal for the first three races then new only from Race 4 on. More than enough time to burn down old stock.
According to MG website, the rain tires are also reformulated… I wonder if they will be more competitive with the Vega wets now? The photos on the website don’t make it look like the tread pattern has changed.
I know this topic is about the reds in 206, but the first series to run them happened this past weekend at skusa winter series. Anyone get to run down there and have feedback on the new tire and comparisons to the old one?
That was all 2 stroke racing. So no 4 stroke feedback yet.
Haven’t heard much from the 2 stroke folks though?
Yeah, that’s why I had the caveat at the beginning. But it’s still the first the tire has been run so I was curious of any feedback. I don’t run that tire myself at all so it’s strictly curiosity on my part.
Also interested to hear now the rains handled since there was a lot of wet running in varying degrees of moisture. That’s always been a complaint I’ve heard of the Mgs not stacking up well to other rain tires like the Vegas.
The only feedback I heard was the one snippet from Norberg where he said he assumed the track would’ve built rubber quicker with the softer Reds but he didn’t feel like it was noticeable, at least in terms of how much rubber went down.
My guess is it isn’t a huge difference from this generation to prior, but you may see slight adjustments made to pressures and chassis setup.
Wet and dry - seem like great tires. And you are back to tuning a tire and chassis properly. We were 7.5-10 psi on the Reds and 8-16 psi on the Wets.
Tuning was back to normal thinking - manipulating pressures was as much about sidewall deflection as it was about building pressure/heat.
We never ran a set more than 4-5 heat cycles though so can’t comment on longevity. There was a notable difference between 4-5 heat cycles and new but second and third heat cycles were still very tunable.
My gut feeling is that this is going to make for a great event tire but it may not be a great club tire as we’ll be back to buying tires to qualify. Could be wrong though - time will tell!
Thanks Ronald, and please bear with me, but to make sure I’m interpreting this 100% correctly – 2024 times were less than the 2023 time by the amounts shown, or where 2024 worse than the 2023 times by that amount? UPDATE: I see now
Data backs up what the karters were saying about the new MG Tire SH2 compound at the Superkarts! USA Winter Series opener in Homestead, Florida. Qualifying times from 2023 to 2024 were much quicker across the six categories that utilize the new compound. EKN will continue to monitor the speeds of the SH2 at the second event in February.
Boy, those are massive time differences. It’s like the difference between Red and Yellow. I wonder what the drop-off/longevity is going to be like.
2024 times were faster.
Possibly reading too much into it… but that chart seems to be a great example of the load sensitivity of tires given it fits perfectly with class weight and speed.
All tire manufacturers have made some steps between last to current (2024 - 2026) homologation, in different ways. Some focused on performance, some focused on drivability in all conditions and some on the performance / longevity ratio. Difficult for me to go into more details, within my realm of responsibilities…
What you must know is that we allowed for two different carcasses to be homologated, which is a big change from last gen (which mandated one carcass for both front and rear). This was identified to be a limiting factor for some, as adequate balance between the two kart’s axle could never be achieved.
Expect to see increased drivability and more neutral handling with pretty much all the new gen homologated tires, based on the above.
Does this mean choice of multiple tires for those racers?
I’m not really sure i understand the question Dom 
It means that most manufacturers reformulated their new gen tires with a dedicate front and rear carcass in mind, which accounts for the differences in stresses that they each go through, amongst other small things here and there depending on the brand.
Within a single supply scenario for any given club/regional/national event, the ultimate difference between brands doesn’t really matter, as everyone is on the same tire anyways. I have never personally come across events that allow drivers to choose their brand / model of tires.