Hideeho
Last weekend I did some testing of inserts & thought I would share the results. I had 3 sets of brand new never run green dd's all mounted on Rulux wheels. The inserts were (listed from softest to firmest): stock and1 inserts (no trimming), proline medium closed cell, & AKA red (all inserts were new also). My front tires for testing were AKA vectors (agressive).

I always seem to need a warm up before I get going well. I warmed up with nearly bald barcode fronts & rears (using bald tires for warm ups gets my trigger finger settled down for throttle control quicker). Once I got settled down & turning consistant laps I started actuall testing.

The track I'm running on is indoor HARD pack red clay that is rather rough. It has 2 spots that are very rough (turning onto & off of the main straight) due to having been blown out & repaired twice. The track was damp (not wet, no mud sticking by the time I started testing) & cool (60*-70* all day). The track never got to dry so the dust never got bad.

I started with the medium proline. They were terrible. I had more traction with the bald barcodes. To make matters worse, they were not predictable. One lap it would hook up, the next it would slide. Catching the slide was also more difficult. I had catch it VERY early or there was no coming back. I tested them again after the end of the race & got the same results.

Next I went with the AKA red. They were much better, but still not terribly impressive.

Finally I tried the stock and1 inserts. They were dialed! Supurb traction & very predictable slipping. I also had more straight line traction. These were the only inserts I was pulling wheelies with down the front straight. I WILL be stripping the other 2 & putting and1's back in them.

My guess about the results is because my track is hard packed & rough the softer inserts allows more flexability for the tire to conform to the track. I would expect on a very smooth surface the cc inserts will give a better result than they did for me.

I also tried some different tires. All were green compound with and1 inserts. First were Hybrids. They were decent, better than the dd's w/ AKA, but not quite there. Next were 3d's. Really liked these. If I didn't or couldn't get dd's I would be happy with these. The tires were not quite an apples to apples comparison as both the hybrids & 3d's had been run at a previous event at another track so they had about 2-3 runs on each. They were still in really good shape, but not new & un used like the dd's were at the start of the day.