I am going to a track that runs the Vega reds for 206 and I have no experience with them, plus its a night race. Looking for some input on pressures or any other insights would be welcome.
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I just experienced these tires so I went looking for the pressures I found online…
This infinite loop seems to happen a lot for me…
So anyway, from Vega themselves to start, and others can chime in with personal experience Vega USA - VAH Red
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They’re a grippy tire with a soft squatty shoulder that like low pressure when it’s hot. I have no night experience with them, but we typically don’t change pressures much between night and day with any tire we normally run.
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We’ve typically ran 9-13 depending on chassis, class and weather.
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10-15 for a grippy track or warm conditions. 15-25 for a low grip track or very cool conditions. New tires have a lot of grip off the bat so drop pressures a bit. You can take a lot of front grip out and make sure your kart is free.
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We run Vega reds here in Jacksonville Florida. I think our next race is a night race as well. During the day we run like 10 psi and slowly go up in pressure when temp drops throughout the day.
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i thought they mounted easy.
Our track went to Vegas this year after using MG’s for the last few years. My experience so far has been that around 10psi during the day is pretty close. We’ve not run them in cool conditions yet, so I can’t really comment on that.
The two main things I’ve noticed is that they seem more sensitive to pressure changes than the MG’s and they are grippy as hell on the first lap. No real warmup needed.
I’ve fought an overgripped situation all year with them. This is on a 28mm chassis iKart. It loved the MG Reds, but I’ve fought the Vegas so far.
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Thanks all for the input.
Several commented to run more pressure when cool, does more pressure equal more traction / grip or is there another reason to raise the pressure?
More pressure = more temp, and as with any tire there is an optimal tire temp range. Track temps go down, tire pressure must come up to achieve the same working temp.
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Yeah generally the pressure helps control when the tires “come in” and get up to temp. Higher pressure they’ll come in sooner, lower they will come in later. The length of the session and track temp will influence it.
I have a hard time understanding why this is. In my head (not always a good place) more pressure would create a firmer platform and less deflection and I would think less heat because of this. Conversely, a low-pressure tire would seem to have more friction both in rolling resistance and sideways movement and this would create more heat.
I never understood it either, and still don’t. But for some reason that’s how it works.
Maybe the higher the inflation the more energetic the air molecules going boing boing. This transfers to the stretched rubber?
Higher pressures help create surface temp, lower temps help create core temp by the deformation of the tire creating heat.
The issue is that if you run too low air, you never build surface temp so you never actually get the tire biting into the pavement to generate the grip and load necessary to flex the tire carcass.
If you run too high pressure, the tire is stiffer so you just flash heat the surface of the tire and it never flexes to build core temp and the tire immediately grains on the surface and doesn’t bite the track.
It’s about finding the sweet spot.
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This is me with regards to everything tuning in go karts…
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A few notes from last nights race. The Vega reds are very gummy feeling like a MG yellow. This particular track is old and has an abrasive texture and there was a lot of rubber roll off. The final, which was in the dark, I decided to go up to 15psi, however, my fast lap was lap 3 and from there the lap times kept getting slower, it didn’t feel like it was getting slower but each lap was slower the previous.
I noticed other racers scraping tires with a rasp or heat guns. I have never seen this in sprint racing. As I mentioned there is a lot of rubber roll off and racers wanted to get rid of the spent rubber. Any thoughts on this?
Pretty common in lower hp stuff. The tire heats up enough to get sticky but not enough force is being generated to clean the tire naturally when driving.
If you’re on a sticky tire and low hp, lots of guys will scrape the tire between sessions to get the build up off.
I noticed this with the VLH and the MG Red too. Kept seeing clag on the tires as I was driving around and was like “am I off the line or what”
TJ this is very insightful but it got me to thinking. Often on the out laps coming to formation start, karts will weave about to build heat and clean the surface but does this really build heat or the type of heat desired? Does the rotational motion alone create heat?