The Doctor
13-10-2013, 07:41 AM
Dave, you asked for a report...
So, after the finals last Friday, we compared the performance of the Schumacher Venom 88 tyre in White and Yellow compounds vs the Mini Pin in Yellow compound, in preparation for the coming Indoor Winter Series.
The track had been raced on all evening, so the line was clean and rubbered-in. I had been running yellow cut staggers (low profile) and yellow mini pins (both 50% worn) on my Cougar SV2 for the club meeting and simply swapped the rear tyres with no other set-up changes to make a direct comparison. The Venom 88 tyres were fresh out of the packet with no scrubbing-in, tyre juice or pre-warming. We used Schumacher medium inserts inside the Venom tyres. Comparison is as follows...
Compared to the Mini Pins, there was more grip from the White compound Venom 88s. These tyres gave excellent grip immediately, both in a straight line and laterally. The rear-end stayed planted to the track through fast sweepers and tighter hairpins, no matter how hard I drove. Into and out of the coner, I could not get the rear-end to break loose. This resulted in some understeer into tighter corners and more rear-end roll from the increased lateral grip. This could probably be overcome through other set-up changes to remove some of the rear grip. These tyres would also benefit from the tubby inserts or some belting inside the tyre due to their soft compound rubber, which tended to roll on the wheel and expand at high speeds.
The Yellow Venom 88s felt very hard on the wheel before we ran them on track. However, again they gave good straight-line traction and also gripped well through power-on sweeping corners. The main difference compared to the White compound was in the later phase of tight power-off corners, or when braking for hairpins, where they would lose lateral grip causing the rear of the car to snap out. This didn't seem to change significantly after the tyres had been warmed up over several laps. Adopting a smoother driving style did help, but further set-up changes would be needed to add additional rear-end lateral grip when running this tyre.
So, although we didn't time the laps, neither of these tyres felt as fast as the Mini Pin when swapped directly with no other set-up changes. However, I do think that either compound could be made to handle well when matched to the overall car set-up. Whether they would be faster than the Mini Pin is not known at this stage, so I plan to run these at the next 2 club meetings to answer this question before the Indoor Winter series begins on 26th October.
So, after the finals last Friday, we compared the performance of the Schumacher Venom 88 tyre in White and Yellow compounds vs the Mini Pin in Yellow compound, in preparation for the coming Indoor Winter Series.
The track had been raced on all evening, so the line was clean and rubbered-in. I had been running yellow cut staggers (low profile) and yellow mini pins (both 50% worn) on my Cougar SV2 for the club meeting and simply swapped the rear tyres with no other set-up changes to make a direct comparison. The Venom 88 tyres were fresh out of the packet with no scrubbing-in, tyre juice or pre-warming. We used Schumacher medium inserts inside the Venom tyres. Comparison is as follows...
Compared to the Mini Pins, there was more grip from the White compound Venom 88s. These tyres gave excellent grip immediately, both in a straight line and laterally. The rear-end stayed planted to the track through fast sweepers and tighter hairpins, no matter how hard I drove. Into and out of the coner, I could not get the rear-end to break loose. This resulted in some understeer into tighter corners and more rear-end roll from the increased lateral grip. This could probably be overcome through other set-up changes to remove some of the rear grip. These tyres would also benefit from the tubby inserts or some belting inside the tyre due to their soft compound rubber, which tended to roll on the wheel and expand at high speeds.
The Yellow Venom 88s felt very hard on the wheel before we ran them on track. However, again they gave good straight-line traction and also gripped well through power-on sweeping corners. The main difference compared to the White compound was in the later phase of tight power-off corners, or when braking for hairpins, where they would lose lateral grip causing the rear of the car to snap out. This didn't seem to change significantly after the tyres had been warmed up over several laps. Adopting a smoother driving style did help, but further set-up changes would be needed to add additional rear-end lateral grip when running this tyre.
So, although we didn't time the laps, neither of these tyres felt as fast as the Mini Pin when swapped directly with no other set-up changes. However, I do think that either compound could be made to handle well when matched to the overall car set-up. Whether they would be faster than the Mini Pin is not known at this stage, so I plan to run these at the next 2 club meetings to answer this question before the Indoor Winter series begins on 26th October.