Guys, listen to this. I have had a long and very interesting discussion with Steven Morris, racing driver from England now staying and working in SA, 2 weeks ago. He is currentlly with Audi Advanced driving, did development on the new 3-series in Europe, the Subaru Sti, and the current Audi range.
After he drove my M3, he said I am running too low preasures on my car, it was set at the minimum as suggested on the sticker in the doorframe. He says those preasures are the lowest safe and comfortable preasures to be used, but not the optimal preasures for great handling.
He suggested that I set the preasures at the highest suggested figure for the especially for a car like mine that is driven like it was designed for, for following reasons:
1. The tyres flex much less during cornering and more tread surface is kept on the road surface
2. The tyre respond better and quicker during cornering, intial "bite" and steering response is attained
3. If the tyres are set too soft, the shocks are not working optimally as with higher preasures, as the soft tyres soak up too much of the upward movement of the suspension instead of the shocks doing the work.
Do note though, you must distinguish between more sporty and performance orientated driving, and just normal calm driving. If the latter applies the the lower preasures will be fine and a tad more comfortable.
If you go to the track, then you must know what you are doing. I've done quite a lot of track racing and -driving with normal road cars off all sorts and makes and gained a lot of experience as such. You start off with lower preasure settings 'cause the tyres heat up a llot under track conditions. After a lap or two, the tyres are heated up as much as they would, they can easily jump up from let's say 2,0 Kpa to 3,2Kpa. You have to determine by what would be the optimum track preasure, which is the topic for a whole new thread, and then stick to that preasure for optimum laptimes.
The track use preasure will vary between about 2,6 and 3,0 Kpa, depending on the type of track and tyre used.
So, the priciple I want to highlight is that the optimum track use preasure will give you the best handling, steering response and suspension performance. So, if that preasure is used on normal roads, you will also have the same benefits,but due to the tyres not being heated up in the same manner as on the track, the initial preasure would not be influenced much during town road driving which means you can use the higher preasures from the outset..
So, before you want to know which tyre preasures to use, first detemine how you would like to drive the car. If harder tyres rather define sportiness and good handling for you in stead of uncumfortable ride quality, then you may rather go for the higher settings. Otherwise you stick with the mom's taxi mode preasures.
...used same wit non run flats and never had a prob..the non run flats are michelin pilot sports 3's..awesome tires in my opinion.
