Originally posted by AdrianM
Hi guys...I'm Adrian Martinez, the sales manager from Schumacher USA. We are the exclusive importer of Take Off Tires into the US. I am responsible for every US race run on these tires since 2000.
There are a couple of reasons why Take Offs seem to keep popping up everywhere
1. There are a lot of tires out there that are very fast for one run but only the CS series tires seem to be able to turn consistent laps from the 1st to the 4th run. Other tires are 2-3/10th's per lap slower on the 2nd run and lose more every run after that. This is a big deal when you are limiting the quantity of tires used. It used to be that heats where you had to run re-runs were throwaway heats. In Portland most of the factory guys liked the tires best on the 2nd run. That is unheard of.
2. We heavily discount them to the race organizers so they can offer them to racers at a low cost.
3. All race tires are sold on consignment so the promoters can send back all unused/unopened packs. They never get stuck with extra tires.
4. The are premounted so the promoters can avoid the impossible task of insert tech. This also saves a lot of time for the racers.
5. Take Off tires are the most popular rubber racing tire in the US today. Actually they are the most popular in Europe too. This means everyone is familiar with them.
Open tire problems
The last big open tire race we went to was the Novak race in 2001. We bought $2000 worth of various tires. $1200 in various inserts. This was for 2 guys to run Mod. In the end the best tires were the Yok 139G prototypes that Chris Tosolini had received a few days before the race. No one else had them. Chris gave a few sets out to our guys as we used to sponsor him and he really is a good guy and thats what we ran. $3200 spent on tires that were useless.
This wasn't the first time that happened either. At the 2000 Carpet Nats at Minnreg Yokomo showed up with new 138S and 138M tires. No one else had them and Barry Win that year. They were a huge advantage at that track.
At the 1999 and 2000 Reedy races at Ripon Barry figure out a trick to make H13's way faster. You had to run an Echo Insert (from Schumacher so he had to tell us) Dremel down the center ridge of the insert, cut the insert, shorten it by 6mm and glue it back together then trim inner bead ridges from the wheel. This was the only way to make the tire run decent for more than one run. For those 2 years Yokomo and Schumacher had an advantage no one else knew about.
Spec tires eliminate all of this funny business.
Very nice insight on to what it would take if you ran any type tire you wanted to!!!!!!!! Racing is expensive and now traveling in even more expensive than ever so you need to do whatever you can to help get the racers their and normally saving them money is the most important.