[thunderbird]

So this could be put in the wheels and tires section or the suspension section, but I'll tell my story here.

I ripped up a B.F. Goodrich R1 tire last weekend.

It was a two day event at Heartland Park in Topeka and I decided to drive back to the hotel with the race tires on rather than switch tires. The 8:15 first-car-off on Sunday and 7:00 a.m. open-the-gates influenced the decision. It was only ten miles to the hotel or so and the roads were crappy, but no worse than some of the courses we autocross on. I'm a mile down the road and the front right tire starts vibrating. Its getting worse pretty quick so I pull off at the first chance and its too late. I can feel the tire tearing itself to bits as I park the car. Sure enough, the inside wall is shredded. There's no other sign of rubbing or any other indication as to what cause the tire to go flat. I had checked the tire pressure before racing and they had been at 35 psi cold, so I hadn't added any air before the race.

People are nice in Topeka and two separate groups stop by and ask to see if I needed help. But the street tires are in the car along with jacks and anything else I need, and forty minutes later I have all the tires changed back to my street tires.

And I raced the second day on my street tires, pzero 265 wide all seasons. I loved it when the announcer said after my last run, "that's a seven-tenths of a second improvement and a clean run, which moves him into sixth place..." out of six cars running BSP.

Afterwards, I'm blasting down the turnpike at reasonably legal speeds and almost home and I notice the car is pulling hard to the right. Now that's pretty weird, especially as it goes away when I slow down. I decide I'd better check the car out and especially the new camber plates when I get home.

Sure enough, the bolts adjusting camber on the whitelines were loose on the right side. I can understand how that might cause the car to pull. I can only conjecture on how that caused the front right tire to go flat. But I'll know now to check and recheck any suspension changes that I make for race day.