Ouch. :(

Fastrack has been updated (my bold font for emphasis):

Road Tire
1. Effective 1/1/2013, after consideration of the member input the SEB has amended the specifications for the Road Tire supplemental classes such that the minimum treadwear rating is 180, (7918,7945, 7953, 7986, 7995, 8004, 8014, 8020, 8026, 8030, 8032, 8051, 8083, 8100, 8115, 8214, 8283). The SEB believes that a higher treadwear rating for RT than for ST is consistent with the differences in levels of preparation.

Unless you plan on attending national events, this could be a non-event at the local level. Local regions can use any rule set they want -- including allowing RS3s.

What will be interesting to see is if Hankook and the others raise their tread wear numbers with new production of tires. The manufacturer of the tire is the one that determines the number and it has very little correlation to tread wear or performance. The difference between 140 and 180 is miniscule anyways. The old days were much simpler. If you ran stock class, competitors pretty much ran OE type tires. Hoosier TD's were the exception. At one time even they were legal until my friend Bruce Kalin won nationals driving a 67 Vette in B stock. The next year they were outlawed. The real game changer was when Yokohoma came out with the AOO1R's around 83. Everything pretty much escalated from there. I may be giving a history lesson here, but the AOO1R is what put the Tire Rack on the road to where they are today. The Tire Rack started out in Indianapolis using an old gas station as a retail store. At that time their speciality was high performance. Mike Joines decided to run a small ad in the Auto Week classified section for this tire. They sold more than they ever imagined from this ad. Thus the idea for starting a mail order tire business. Pretty cool story actually.

Very cool story! So the entire thing truely balooned from an actual 'Tire Rack' :bellyroll:

Hey, be glad you guys all have the road tire class at all! Here in Hawaii our local chapter doesn't even recognize the RT class, so I'm stuck saving for R-comps or trying to find a decent used-set. Not easy on a small island where only a handful of people would have them...

As a side note the Solo Board opened up a real can of worms in detrermining the legality of tires based on treadwear numbers. This was shear stupidity on their part. If they wanted to outlaw specific tires, they should of spelled out each specific tire. As I stated above treadwear numbers mean absolutely nothing.

Not necessarily reposted with his permission, but it was a public forums statement, should be fair game.

Andy Hollis is an active Autocross and Track racer with many many many wins, and tests tires for Grassroots Motorsports in specific autocross and track applications. This is a very well rounded full look, including a counterpoint to your sentiment, while still acknowledging it. As with all things, it's a bit more complicated that the face of it.

"Because it isn't about treadwear, per se.

The industry itself has categorized the tires. Just like automakers compete against each other in categories, so do the tiremakers. Like the automakers, within each category, products are refined to perform better in some characteristic relative to the competition. That may be road noise and mileage for a touring tire, wet/dry performance for a Max Performance summer tire or simply dry performance for an Extreme Performance Summer tire.

Note also that these characteristics are for Real Street Use, not autocrossing or track day use. The latter two constitutes ABUSE and how a tire performs within its category on the street DOES NOT translate directly to autocross performance. This is key! Try and get a tire you used for autocross warrantied for mileage, for example.

The best real street tires for autocrossing are those in the Extreme Performance Summer category. While it isn't a hard and fast rule, that category has no tires below 140 treadwear. Likewise, there isn't a single r-comp with tw above 100.

This is all like trying to define porn. Nobody wants to slide down the slippery slope of r-comps again. But treadwear is only one characteristic of a real street tire. Molded tread depth is another, along with a real tread pattern and significant enough void ratio to not be a hazard in the rain. Also, a puncture resistant belt package with enough material that the tiremaker doesn't have to stamp "not for highway use" or make you sign a waiver to buy them.

But none of those objective characteristics is enough to totally define a street tire versus an r-comp. That's why we have the exclusion list...to keep a motivated manufacturer from cheating the system. Helping diffuse that motivation is tiremaker liability risk, as winning at autocross is not nearly worth the risk of someone killing themselves because they tried to drive the "autocross special" on the street. Not for a big tire company, at least.

Moving the tw to 180 somehow tries to redefine what a real street tire is by using a characteristic that only partially defines it. And the industry itself doesn't use that marker. Go to the Tire Rack web site and look at tw ratings for the top couple of categories of performance tires.

I offer up the following example. I ran One Lap this year on Conti DWs. They are in the second-tier tire industry category (Max Performance Summer). They also have a tw of 340 and are molded at 10/32nds. By the end of One Lap, they had between 2-4/43nds of tread left on the fronts. And that was with swapping them front to rear for the transits because of flat spots. So that's all track use. My usual tire (on backorder) is the 140-rated RS3, molded at just under 9/32nds. The previous two years I have finished with the front tires at 6-7/32nds. And that was without swapping for the street miles. I still am using the same pair of rear tires from two years ago, and that includes over two years of track days in between.

In short, it isn't about the treadwear by itself. IMO, the SEB is misguided in trying to redefine what constitutes a real street tire, or more importantly what constitutes good performance value. That is especially silly when it is common knowledge that a whole new crop of tires is coming out next year.

Keep out r-comps, sure, but allow the free market system to determine where the value lies and continue to make progress on performance. New will replace old...it always does."

Looks like RS-3 for our car at nationals then since it seems to be allowed this year still.

Unless you are competing at Nationals, no one at a local event is going to call you out for running RS3's. I have never once seen someone protest at a local event.

I disagree. I would take exception to someone running on tires illegal in class. It's ab unfair advatage. Even if you finish 5th of 6, then 6th place is being cheated.

For example, in the DC region, a newbie brought out his stock Elise on "stock" tires. He picked up a hotshoe co-driver at the event and ended up winning the class. Unfortunately, his "stock" tires were A048s (or something) with a 100 treadwear rating. It was politely mentioned to him and he DQ'd himself.

Some of the factory Lotus' come on OEM tires as low as 40 treadwear so it very well could have been stock.

I've never read legality of those cars in street tire classes

I completely agree. I had to protest someone locally when they were running our local Tire class on Nitto NT08s. I still raw timed him, but nonetheless a few people got beat and it wasn't fair.

Also, I'm curious...does your region not allow R-comps in novice?

There is no "novice" class in the DC region. If I had to guess, he was running RTR or ST in the Elise, but I don't remember that day.