Toyo R888 R

Fitted these on my 2nd Alfa 155 for a trackday, the dry grip they provide is by any means outstanding, the cornering speeds the car reached were almost on the edge of being described as ridiculous! They seem to be gripping quite well too on wet roads I must say. Up to about 80-90 km/h they are quite but at higher speeds they make some considerable noise.

They did wear very little after a total of 30 laps, "pedal to the metal" action, probably because I had insisted on aligning the wheels as perfectly as possible.

Will be using them again on the next trackday, they can cope with at least as many laps again for sure.

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Really impressed with the amount of grip with hard rain

After trying some cheap chinese trackay tires (goodride sport rs), I decided to step up the size and the quality of the tires. Searched the same size as skoda says form factory, and then went for the r888r. Same course, same car, instantly more feedback, more sharp response, grip levels that made a compact car briskier than ever. Managed to shave 2 seconds of the previous time, less flex on the sidewall, more speed on the curves. Be carefull, first few laps in a underpowered car, can be tricky by the lack of temp of the tires. 2 warming laps, problem solved. Decided only rotating from side, not from axle to see the wear on them, and lets say grip demands wear for sure. 5 trackdays and a 800 km trip back from a course and the fronts are now in the wear marks. The rears, only 2mm wear. Please consider that the average weather here is 30 celsius avg in summer. Those in the uk or europe can see less wear difinitely because of the colder climate conditions. Now hoping that covid eases the life to get back on the track, still got some decent grip in the fronts so lets push it to the limits. 30 psi cold 38 psi hot rear 30 psi cold in 35 psi hot If you like to send more tail happiness, 34 cold , so you can reach 38 psi. Toyo says 32 38 is the optimal psi. Definitely gonna purchase some more...

he car I had came fitted with a set of Yokohama A539 tyres. Designed for normal passenger car use they needed significantly more than 500kg on top of them and they were hopeless. Zero grip, got hot, became squirmy and unpredictable and were hopeless on track. Id driven on the ZZS quite a lot but wasn't sure if Avon merited the price premium, and the tyre size wasn't ideal for my model so I opted for the R888R in GG compound.

Shortly after I had a chance at Croft to compare three Caterham's with ZZR, ZZS and the R888R.

Initial impressions are that in the bone dry with all other considerations gone, the ZZR is king. Genuinely a superb stable high performance tyre that stays on the boil for a significant amount of time. I'd suggest a window of at least 10 laps where the tyre was on perfect form. Then a slow transition into being slightly more slippery and excess tyre wear as the temperature increases.

The ZZS is a superb road tyre for a Caterham. Remarkably useful in the wet and even down to quite low temperatures, and works very well on a track as long as you limit your sessions to say 6-8 laps. After this again the transition into slightly less predictable begins and the car just becomes very slidey!

The R888R was somewhere in between the two extremes. I felt that the Toyos offered ALMOST ZZR performance but at a fairly significant discount. They were definitely better from cold than the ZZS and lasted a little longer before going off. They also worked almost as well on the road as a ZZS, dealing with water pretty well. The R888R stayed on my car.

Downsides: the R888R is a heavier tyre with a stiffer sidewall, so this makes them a little less comfortable and adds a touch of unsprung weight to a light car, but their benefits generally outweighed these issues.

Ultimately I feel budget and requirement would dictate which you'd have. On a modern Caterham where ride height and sump layouts allow the smaller ratios, I'd suggest pick either a ZZR/S. But for older academy cars based on 175/70/13 tyres, going down to a 185/55/13 was just too much. The toyo in 185/60/13 was a better bet, with a small tweak to ride height.

This is a slow tire. I'm not sure how this tire is getting so many positive reviews. Maybe it's good for a lightweight vehicle or in smaller sizes. But I think it's no good for modern heavy cars which typically weighs more than 1400kg, or in bigger sizes. Grip is low and your laptime will suffer. This stand no chance against the track-focused tires, such as A050 GS, 03G, because it's quite a bit slower than some road tires, like RE-71R. Also, this tire is pretty heavier than other tires in same size which may contributes its slowness.

track use only, impressive dry grip, short braking distance, maybe the best of all-considering Michelin ps4s and other top tires , on wet it is terrible, great cornering but a little hard to handle, very short life, a heavy tire, for track days i will buy again and again.