Has buggy racing got stupid?!
 

So, entirely open to discussion. I race outdoors on astroturf and Schumacher Minis-spikes have been brilliant for years, they've been lasting 4 meetings without too much trouble (so 20 races, 4x qualifiers and a final at each meeting).

I got back from club racing yesterday and EVERYONE is finding the need to use the newer, faster Schumacher Dart tyre. Yes it seems to offer a fantastic level of grip but people are using TWO sets per meeting seeing as the lose their peak after the 3rd race (on astro turf).

Is buggy racing the new cheque-book racing? It seems to of just got a little stupid...

Thoughts?

without a control tyre, people wanting to win will use the fastest possible tyre to try and make it happen.
if you can rock up with spikes, have fun and leave with a smile on your face then that should be the main goal.
yes most of us turn up to win, but as long as you have fun!
that's my moto anyway :)

I've packed it in due to spiralling tyre costs even to be competitive in a club series. I just cant justify it on a personal level - others have their own views but from past experience the current tyres are just not up to the job.
The new darts just don't last - 2 sets of rears are a minimum. Mini-spikes last longer but they don't give enough grip as the darts do. I feel a set of tyres should last a meeting to keep the hobby balanced - the tyres used to degrade, but currently they just fall off the cliff.

Going to a harder compound could of helped the situation maybe - but then everyone would have to do that to not make it a two tier race.
I feel the dart is different - I was convinced the compound has been altered, but it could just be the profile and the cars characteristics of being able to rotate up their own arse.

Electrics, spares and other areas of the hobby are the best they have ever been - things last, dont cost stupid amounts if youre careful and you can get away with having cheaper motors / escs. However the hop up band wagon is frustrating. You know you don't NEED them, but we all know it makes us feel better with them!

Darts were meant to be a solution, however you still see spikes being trimmed and even more new sets getting bolted on.

Yup tyre costs have gone through the roof with the use of darts. At the Kidderminster regional (tyre wear not helped by the inclusion of all the tarmac parts of the circuit) I was getting just over 1 run out of a set of Tyres. Have way through the second run you could feel them going off. Coventry regional wasnt much better either with a full astro track.

Someone started a discussion on Facebook about limiting the amount of sets you can run in one meeting like at touring car nationals and was met with mostly negative replies from let's say the high tier drivers and positive ones from the non A finalists.

I've personally never known tyre wear be so bad as it has been lately and something needs to be done about the spiralling costs on tyres.

you mention limiting sets, only problem with that i see is, are the darts weaing too fast to even be able to limit them?
With the touring cars running a used set vs brand new dosnt mean you are instantly the slowest on the track.
if the darts are wearing to the point of undriveable after say 3 runs then its clearly the wrong tyre at the moment.
spikes worked well and gave a good balance of wear vs grip

It makes sense for clubs to have the Schumacher Mini-spikes as their nominated control tyre if they feel that the Dart's are taking the enjoyment out of club racing, which they certainly seem to be.

I've seen that Dart's are the nominated tyre at Mendips oOoos round this year which could remove a lot of fun for some people £££!

i will be buying 2 sets for that event, 1 set per day. if i need more i shall find the trackside shop lol.
seems silly to me to be buying more sets of tyres for a buggy meeting than i do buy for a touring car meeting

Is buggy racing really getting that expensive? I cry at the thought of spending £50 on 2 sets of tyres for an outdoor touring car meeting. Don’t think I could handle doing that with buggies too

Yup gone crazy hence why rc in our country will never be massive. They would charge for air if it wasnt free already. Tyres should last more than two rounds, one event should be set as a rule by the BRCA to tyre makers so they redesign again and get the mix right.

A bit like aire valley back in the day when yokomo's were tires of choices 3 sets for one day:thumbdown:

This is one of the reasons I packed up 1/8th off road racing due to tyre,wheel and insert cost, and returned to 1/10th.

Now its getting as bad with the amount you need per meeting.

How is this going to encouraged new people in to the sport when you tell them the tyre cost.:(

Me and my 11 year old lad both race on an absolute shoestring budget, he's had a set of yellow minispikes on the rear of his 2WD since March, and just swapped them for a pair of darts for a regional a couple of weeks ago (control tyre) - but got him blue compound to try and make them last. He loves how it drives with those on so going to stick with them. Even with brand new lo-pro yellow cut staggers it's still a bit front end pushy and safe so it's not like the blue compound is letting go at the back.

A round earlier in the year I could only afford tyres for him, so I was racing on bald spikes in the wet. Still didn't care as it was fun for us both. A chap at our club had a good laugh at my car and took pity on me, lending me a set of BB greens for the final (Ta Neil!).

We'll both never be A final material and we know it, we both simply enjoy a day's racing :lol:

Tyres!!!
 

Ok so here it is.
We ran our yz2 indoors on carpet on yellow mini darts, they lasted 2 rounds (10 minutes)of qualifying and needed replacing to stay competitive, we ran the same car on the same carpet with the same driver with proline pin points, they were a bit loose for the first 5 minutes but then lasted 3 full meetings!!! (60 minutes) before they went off.
BUT proline pin points are never a controlled tire:confused:

Not sure of other peoples experience but that was mine.

Our recent regional at Herts on a hot day was a fresh pair of rears every run, controlled tyre, Schumacher mini dart

I wonder if meetings ran a Mod class (as we are now) and a Sport class with sport being a controlled low wearing tyre how far the numbers would spread.....

I did a practice day at mendip a couple of months ago, running worn yellow minispikes on the back of my YZ-2 DT.

It felt like it had plenty of grip to me. I have a set of darts still in the packet that I've yet to try; they remind me of mini-pins in a way, which are my least favourite tyre ever!

Indoors on carpet it's cactus for me every time.

Going through 2 sets a day sounds like lunacy. It can't be sustainable.

National meetings are getting to a stage where you can easily need a set per run to stay on pace. :cry:

I was talking to a mate today who did both National days the weekend.

He used 12 pairs over both days.......:woot:

Assuming he bought loads of spare rims with him, that's £96 just for tyres.

Lunacy.

thats stupid numbers.... £96 on tyres is beyond sustainable

Hi, just to put a few things straight:

The oOple Off Road Open Series has chosen Schumacher Darts AND Proline Pinpoints.

We have successfully run Pinpoints at all the venues, Ulverston, Broxtowe and Oswestry. A number of the oOple team have run them as their chosen tyre at all three venues so far.

I have run the Harder Z3 compound at two Bury Club meetings and a Southport meeting as well as trying them at all the oOple meetings above and I'm still on the same pair. In fact yesterday at Bury, they were giving so much rear drive and grip I was struggling with quite a bit of understeer!

You can now get a front Proline called a Wedge Squared which looks very much like a Schumacher cut stagger and it works very well, in fact it has grip and hardly any grip roll.

Whilst the Prolines are somewhat more expensive to buy in the first place they last a heck of a lot longer with in my opinion not much drop in performance. I tried them back to back with Darts at Bury yesterday and the Pinpoints were way quicker.

They won't work at every club but for the average club driver and if rules allow, i would invest in a set of Z3 rear Pinpoints and Z3 front Wedge Squared and try them out. You might find you have to alter your cars setup in 2WD as the Pinpoints provide a lot of forward drive.

Pinpoints are no use at Nationals though, i thought this was a general chat not specifically about the Oople series ??? unless i missed something ?

thank you, will get a set or 2 ready for the oople meeting to try!

Should go back to rear motor. Didn't have this tyre wear back then. Think I only bought 1 set of TR32s and 1 set of mini spike green all year in 1991.....:D

COME BACK REAR MOTOR !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:thumbsup:

buggy racing gone stupid
 

my bug bear is cactus as a control tyre on indoor when you have to carve up a brand new tyre to get it to work shows that the tyre is not fit for purpose and yet it is set as a control tyre on the front of 4wd why ??????? would you all go out and buy a new tyre for your full size car and carve it up to get it to work on a road. maybe that not the place to add this in but I would like to think isnt it a conflict of interest that the tyre manufacter that is set as a control tyre is also a chassis manufacturer it may or may not be but maybe something to throw into the mix

i must be one of the very few that dosn't trim or cut up cactus fronts....

I'm interested in trying some of these , could you recommend of where to get some of these from ? Was having a little look and saw they had a soft and medium compound which one would you suggest trying ? I run mainly on astro which happens to be have less grip than usual this year.

Hi Stuart, Dan Osbourne mentioned the oOple Series for the upcoming Mendip Round and said he was looking at buying two sets of Darts.

I realise it does not include the Nationals however CML approached oOple to promote their tyres in our Series because other Series were not, so we took a chance and so far so good.

Maybe in future years the Nationals will look at Prolines instead of/as well as Schumachers?

My own opinion of the National Series is that to get consistency out of your car at such a high level you should run new tyres every run, that's why the top lads do it. Paul Worsley stated as much on his recent appearance on the State of RC Podcast.

The National Series should be for the very top performers and if you want to compete with them you have to accept the costs involved.

Regrettably with the power available in 2WD now you will always burn through soft compound tyres, the only way to stop that is a motor limit but then people will cheat when you impose that sort of limit.

Thats fine, my mistake. When you started of 'clearing things up' it sounded like people were moaning about the oople series which i hadnt seen and i thought it was just general that was all :)

Hi, if you are looking at two sets then get the front wedge squared in both Z3 and Z4 compound and the Rear pinpoints in Z3 and Z4

Z3 = Harder - weirdly I've found they work better as they dig in to the surface - they feel like plastic but don't let that put you off

Z4 = Softer - bit more give in the sidewall, more like a Yellow Minipin. They won't last half as long as the Z3's but that will be about 20 more runs than a yellow Dart.

Actually I've mis quoted Dan, he said it might cost £££'s for Darts at Mendip oople not two pairs that was someone else.

So I wanted to cover off the fact we have also nominated Prolines.

It's new to us as well, but as a resilient tyre they deserve a try, if its dry astro, short pile with not much sand they are very good.

The speed of the cars nowadays is so fast compared to even 3 years ago, the tyres have become faster and cars handling improved but at the sacrifice of tyre wear.
The other point people make is that it’s actually a lot cheaper to race these days because we don’t have to buy loads of motors and batteries all the time.
We don’t have to maintain motors, we don’t have to have fancy charger/dischargers.
Tyre wear is tyre wear, if it’s a big meeting I’ll run new tyres but on random sundays when it’s not busy and doesn’t mean anything then I’ll run ruined 4 meeting old tyres including practice

I am an old occasional club racer these days, and I was thinking the other day I hardly race my B6. I think the main reason is the prospect of being lucky to get through a club meeting on 2 sets of darts. At the Herts regional a couple of my mates ran a new set in 2wd every run, and my CAT XLS took a lot out of one set on the rear.
Having a single supplier of a control tyre works well for them, but someone who may be happy to use a slightly slower tyre to get better value for money is not able to. I don't think its a healthy situation, and this is hardly the first time this subject has come up is it?
It must be time for a rethink before too many people are put off racing because of this. If you want to use a new set a run good luck, but perhaps that's not for everyone?

maybe a choice of tyres for all brca sanctioned events would allow the budget minded racer the chance/choice to race, and promote the sport in a better light than limitting it to the cash rules format its good to see one series offering a choice of two tyre suppliers for there events but then again as brca members are we not all guilty of not pushing this at the agm and changing the rule

I feel sorry for you buggy guys these days .. we run 1/8 on/offroad Rallycross at Mendip with big cars on 3s lipo that'll do 40mph and can easily get a set of tyres to last 2 months !!!

... thats a total cost of £33 !!

I was at a regional recently and asked a team driver with the same car as me for his setup. It was similar to mine and turned out the main difference was he used a new set of rears for every run. That’s 7 sets of rears for a regional as he made the a final! I didn’t enjoy driving my car after my tyres had done one run as it had no grip, but I refuse to run a new set every time. Have to say I am looking at 8th scale ebuggy seriously.

You can get Pinpoints from LMR. At least I did.

I ran the Z3 in first two rounds at Mendip yesterday. Only changed to Darts to prep for Regional. IMHO, they aren't quite as good, but for club meetings on a budget, well worth a try.

I'd second everything Damo has said about them.

To add to that a set of rears isn't unusable after 1 heat. They're perfectly good for practice/club racing. So saying that we need a new set every run doesn't necessarily mean that the cost over a longer period is higher. It means tyre management.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a more durable tyre used in racing, to reduce the cost that is indeed increasing. But it needs to be a control tyre used by all on that meeting series to ensure a level playing field.
If a faster tyre is also allowed then naturally people will use that if it matters to them...

At my local track the pinpoint works, but in z3 they're quite a bit slower than the yellow darts. Z4 seems to be very close in pace, lasts substantially better than the darts and even more importantly they are consistent over multiple runs.

I don't think thats the issue Mark, I personally think it's the amount of power available to us now is the biggest factor with tyre wear. Back in the day we used to run a 13/14x2 in 2wd and 11x2 in 4wd. Would be interesting to see what the motors back then relate to current motors.

Thanks damo will give those a try as running 3 cars is a expensive :thumbdown:

Is z3 the compound ?

I’ve basically given up 1/10th Racing because of this.
At kidderminster, the Z3 tyres lasted really well and gripped okay, but the performance/laptime just isn’t there when compared to a yellow dart. Yes it was 1.5 secs a lap slower. Put on a yellow dart and your instantly faster. Not sure if this is down to sand, rubber in the Astro etc... but running 2 sets of rears and 1 set of fronts per meeting just isn’t sustainable for me.
1 set per run is simply no go, and why I’ve not done regionals for the last 10 years as it’s not enjoyable not being competitive due to size of your wallet.

I’m now doing mini / oval and v cheap. 6 meetings on a pair of rear tyres and only £5 for a new pair truedand glued on wheels.