Dual Track & Road Tire comparing Toyo Proxes R888 to the Yokohama ADVAN Neova AD08 R

What car are you putting them on?

 

Which car they are going on will indeed make a difference.

I can tell you that among the Lotus crowd, the Toyo R888 are a popular choice. They give a decent amount of grip for the track, but are durable enough that you don't have to worry about destroying them with the odd trip to the grocery store.

I have Yokohama Advan A048's on my Exige. They lean a bit more towards the track. About the stickiest street tire out there, but that does come with a pretty high wear rate. Road noise and ride comfort are compromised much more by the very stiff setup I have than the tires, in my opinion. The tires themselves have minimal tread, so not a lot of rolling noise.

Hope some of that helps!

 

Hah! Funny! I am a Lotus guy too, with Ferrari background. I have been tracking my Elise for about eight years now. Was at Big Willow in SoCal this past weekend, with lots of Ferraris around too.

Here is my personal tire review based on personal experience.

Yokohama AO48: Grippy when new, pricey, but heat cycle out badly, so grip goes away

Toyo 888: Grippy WHEN properly set up, sensitive to overdriving, overheating, pressure, camber, heat cycle, humidity, wind, etc. etc. Work great when all is perfect.

Toyo RA-1: Very slightly less grip than perfect 888, but VERY forgiving. If there is air in the tire, they stick till the cords show. My current favorite. Am on my second set. They start out with nice tread depth, but it is stepped, so as they wear they get more like slicks. Nice!

Goodrich g Force R1: REALLY sticky, but still street legal (barely). Face it, these are slicks. Probably the stickiest thing you can drive to the track. Not as sticky as Hoosiers, but a little tougher in the real world.

There are also some Nittos that really work well on heavier cars. Check the Corvette forums and see what they run.

Some of your choices may be restricted by available sizes. For example, I can't get the good Nittos to fit my track only front wheels. I can get rears but not fronts.

As an aside, I started running Dunlop Direzza ZII Star Spec on the street on separate rims, as all the above tires wear pretty quickly. I was STUNNED how good they are on track. Sure, the above are better, but these really are great tires and the price is great!

 

This depends on what your real intended purpose is:

Me, I get 10K total miles and 5 track weekends on a set of B S04s. I can drive my 355 to within 2 seconds of the lap record for 3000-3500 pound cars with less than 400 HP on DoT street tires at TWS; about 2:06. A full on 355 challenge car runs 1:52 on slicks.

 

One thing to consider is that some Dot-R tires the manufacturer tells you is not for the street but competition only. So lets say you hit some water and have an accident. You got barely legal tires when new 4 to 8/32's of tread but have worn tires and the cop nails you for unsafe vehicle bald tires. How is your insurance co going to handle that? I race on slicks and Dot-R tires. Dot-R's are terrible wet and terrible cold. Track surfaces are much kinder than street surfaces. It is really unsafe to run Dot-R's on the street. If you hurt yourself you made that choice. If you hurt someone else that's irresponsible. Consider real street tires with good high performance tradeoff like the newer crop of 200 treadwear rated high perf street tires that are all the rage with street driven cars used on racetracks and auto-X courses. There are even classes for 200TWR tired cars.

Another consideration is that most use stock safety equipment or think they are safer with modified harness bars and home installed harnesses with zero crash testing. A lower grip tire will raise your ultimate laptime and give you a greater margin of safety because speeds will be lower. Your fun factor is nearly the same since it is all about controlling a car at your limit. Whether your laptime is 2:00 or 2:05 will not change your fun factor but certainly lower overall velocity. So if you go with more tire like the Dot-R's consider upping your safety gear substantially too.

 

Good comments, for sure. However, I am in Southern California in an area with little rain (unfortunately), so personally I'm not stressed. As a matter of fact, the Yokohama A048 was fitted at the factory on my Lotus. I will say that if you MUST run a DOT-R tire, something like the Toyo RA-1 has a very nice full tread pattern.

However, unless you are being timed, the difference in lap times is only a couple of seconds. I have been instructing for over forty years and many of my students will have that much variation between laps in the same session.

Two seconds slower and you are just going to have a different group of cars to deal with, but there is always somebody to run with.

So, my personal format is to run a treadwear 200 tire for normal use and then change to a DOT-R for track days and I drive to the track. Works for me.

 

+1 to all of the above. Your experiences very closely match my own. I would add that the first two are ideally suited to lighter cars, and don't do nearly as well on heavy cars (as you alluded to when mentioning the 888's propensity to overheat). Especially agree about the Star Specs-- those are some impressive tires.

My favorite dual purpose tire at present is the Nitto NT01. Quite a bit quicker than the Star Specs but not all that much shorter lived. They are supposed to share their compound with the awesome RA-1s, but they have much larger tread blocks so they don't suffer from the tread squirm that unshaved RA-1s have. Otherwise, they share the RA-1's attributes, except for not handling water as well due to the tread pattern.

My M3 street/track car weighs 3100 full of fuel but without my 200 lbs in it, and makes about 250 RWHP as a guess. With 255/40-17 NT01s on all four corners I've managed a 1:58 and several 1:59s at TWS, although most of my laps are in the 2:00-2:01 range (Harry's Lap Timer+ external GPS). Can't remember how many weekends I get out of the tires but I know it's at least four, and I drive it back and forth to the track, as well as on the street sometimes.

IME, the NT01s fit the OP's stated needs better than anything I've tried unless the car itself doesn't weigh much over 2k lbs.

HTH.

 

IMO the AD08Rs are the best dual purpose tyres i've tried with the intended use of max dry weather grip for canyon carving and for DE / Track days in either dry or wet conditions.
Sadly, they ar enot available in sizes appropriate for a 360, so I bought Bridgestone RE-11s instead.
They are pretty good, but a recent day at Chuckwalla showed me they are no AD08r.......................................

I've used them on various generations of 911s.

Other tyres i've tried as comparo =
Hankook V12 = not even in the same league
Hankook RS-3 = very good, but get greasy faster than the Yoko's
Nitto NT01 = better dry weather grip and don't get greasy, but not a good street tyre (very noisy)
Michelin PSS = not as good as RS-3s or Yokos, less dry grip, but good in pounding rain

Only drawback to the Yoko's as dual purpose tyre IMO = stiff sidewalls = jouncy ride, but great turn-in precision. Tradeoff in everything

Finally, consider the new Bridgestone R-71 if you can find them in an appropriate size. Locals are kicking a$$ with them as Cheater 200 tread wear tyres.
And the Michelin Sport Cup 2s get rave reviews, I've never owned a set.
Buying a Pirelli tyre is not a path I'd go down, even on an F car.

AND

Keep in mind that the 888s and NT01 were designed to use at least -3 degrees of camber which few dual purpose cars are setup for.

Cheers

Craig

 

Like others said NT01 is a great track day tires. Followed close by Bridgestone RE71-R
I've raced extensively on RA1 at World Challenge and Honda Challenge. Then R888. Then NT01 at USTCC. I rate them NT01, RA1, and last R888. Now fastest of all is Hoosier A7. I've also tested the RE71-R to Star Spec 2. The RE71-R is a league better.

Here are my laps compared back to back on the same day between RE71-R and NT01

https://youtu.be/DNL9C8sUglc

https://youtu.be/Oro76PoxpgM

 

There are so many proven, known good options, I would not add an unknown variable to the equation.
They may be good.
They may be crap.

I don't know and am not willing to spend the $$ to experiment