Federal Tires on Sale
 

In case you aren't a listener of Farrah's Smoking Tire Podcast, Express Tire Distributers in SoCal is giving wholesale pricing on Federal tires if you mention hearing about them on the podcast. I'm not a rep of the company so hopefully this post isn't banned/deleted. I scored a set of 4 RS-RR's in 275/35/19 for $495 shipped and the cheapest I could find them at retail was on simple tire for $200 more. Sale lasts until the end of July - hope this helps someone!

Great info to share!

Thank you for sharing - info on discounts are always welcome ... BUUUUUUUTTTT ... Federal tires are garbage. The Z deserves much better tires.

Just my :twocents:

There are better options if you're looking for absolute best times of course. As a beginner track driver, I chose these because they are 1/2 to 1/3 the price of the usual suspects and they will be vastly superior to my all season tires on track. The $700 I saved on tires will go a long ways towards track fees the rest of this summer too.

For argument's sake, is there another $500 car modification that would yield faster lap times?

Fair enough. Good points :tiphat:

Car mods? Maybe, maybe not - there are too many variables to get into that. But you can spend $500 on a driver mod and you'll be far better off in the long run. An instructor running with you is going to help your driving ability to get the maximum out of the car you're driving regardless of the mods. Spending the $700 savings on track time even without an instructor is not a bad idea either - ideally over the life of those tires, you get comfortable with their limits and look to move on to better tires for your next set for improved lap times.

If you are looking for fast time attack laps, Federal tires are just going to hold you back. But like you said, they are going to be worlds better than a/s tires on the track. And as a beginner track driver, you are just looking for faster lap times on a relative scale to yourself. There's not a lot of point in putting slicks on the car if you can't drive them to their potential.

Great point about the instructor! I've got my first ride-along scheduled next month and I'm excited to learn more about car control!

For what it's worth, having driven on the RS-Rs, RS-RRs, and Hankook RS3s on track, I would say that the grip is actually roughly comparable to the RS3s. They hook up well almost immediately, and take heat fairly well for a few laps. After that, they fall off and get a bit greasy. They're not very communicative, but they grip.

Definitely not an RE71R or R888, but like mentioned above, even against the RS3s (which are often $100 less per tire than the R888s), they are a steal.

They're also loud. Like, really, really loud.