Trying to remember if we have anyone that may have run the first challenge race this weekend. Genuinely curious how the new Shinko tires performed. I’m neutral on the tire at the moment as I have no experience, but always interested when a new party comes to play in the market. Hopefully they are a good product, just another possibility when it comes to picking a tire for our area next year.
Here’s some feedback I got from a driver that raced in KZ. Overall the tire is very hard and extremely stiff sidewall. In his words the hard compound wasn’t ideal for KZ, but did extend tire life vs. the softer compounds we usually run. Low PSI and a little from front end grip vs conventional setup helped the kart work well. He said it would make a good club tire as you could easily run 2 weekends. Dropoff was around 0.3" after the first session, and performance held steady for the rest of the heat cycles.
To me that sounds like a good tire. I personally don’t care to run the softest of the soft compounds as I prefer if I can run a whole weekend on a set of tires. Everyone is on the same tires anyhow. I’m usually pretty good on tires and can make the soft ones usually last better than some others but again I don’t mind a harder tire.