Bridgestone is GTM's tire sponsor, so that is a kind of a biased response, IMO.

 

Actually, Bridgestone is sponsor of their two race cars. They deal with other tire brands as well...I got my Falkens Azenis through GTM.

There was no bias in selling Bridgestone vs. Falken from my perspective.

 

pole positions a bit noisy but overall loved em. And also the Falken FK452's I have on the car now...they're amazing in the rain.

As for snow tires...can't go wrong with blizzaks.

 

Curious, are they sponsors or does GTM like the bridgestones and have stickers to participate in the contingency program? There's a bit of a difference.

 

Consider the Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3 for an all around performance tire that's good in the rain with reasonable wear. The Bridgestone RE-11, Dunlop Z1 Star Spec, Kumho XS, Yoko AD08 and Hankook RS3 are the current "top" group of street tires in terms of ultimate dry grip. But unless you are going for the last fractions of a second in an autocross, you likely won't notice the difference in grip but will the tradeoff in wear.

 

Greg told me a couple months back that they sponsored their cars.



FTR - I didn't mean anything negative in my comment regarding GTM, that's where I've bought most of my stuff from.

 

The two race cars are sponsored, I'm not though. I pay for my tires

 

I personall have NOT run the new star specs or the kuhmo XS tires. i HAVE run the RT615 as will as RE01R and now RE11. True our Race cars are Bridgestone sponsored as Sam mentioned. We had Falken sponsorship previously, but we went to bridgestone because we wanted to, not because of a better deal, but a better performing tire and more tech knowledge was also given to us.

RT615 is a great tire, just not for a long period of time on track. It still performs very well in autoX, as it does not get overheated in short runs. The previous gen RE-01R tire was MUCH more consistant on track. I logged plenty of lap times in the same car to document it. They also had much better wet tracktion than the RT615s

The RE-11 is comparable to the RE-01R in many ways, but they updates a few things. One of them being stiffening the outter wall, and softening the inner wall. This gives a better contact patch under cornering load. They also aimed to have better traction over the life of the tire.

 

Dunlop Star specs on my car now. I really like them. BFG KDW2s are super noisy. You can hear the tire roar over an aftermarket exhaust, but otherwise a good tire. I had them on my old old car. GS-D3s on my old car for a short time before I crashed it. I do not believe the tires had anything to do with that. Responsiveness on the GS-D3s seemed to be a little less than the KDW2s and the Dunlops.

I really like my dunlops!

 

i fish tailed w/ sumimoto's HTR III's and went in the ditch coming out of a turn on a back road last month. Before I knew it, the rear end broke lose and I over corrected. Did a 180 and almost rolled, but didn't. Thankfully i did not do any damage to the underside of the car , but it scared the begezzers out of me.. Happened on a nice sunny day too..

From this point forward, i will not sacrifice price for performance and safety..