The car's power curve was very aggressive and peaky, with boost coming on quickly and almost violently, making the car harder to drive, and especially to learn on. Even in stock form, an Evo is overkill for a novice, and in the words of the announcer at the awards ceremony of the last autocross in Farmington "a handfull." This, combined with the sub-competitive and past-prime Azenis made the car rather, um, "exciting" to drive, but not in a good, fast grippy way. In an over-powered and under-tired, hard to modulate power, screaming and smoking tire, coming into every corner way too hot and plowing overheated front tires to compensate for it kind of way. I know this may sound sound like a blast to many, and it is for a few runs, but when you are trying to simplify things to focus on your driving, it's NOT. Especially as a beginner.
So off came the boost controller, and back in went the stock BCS, complete with boost pill for true stock-boost (Cameron verified that he had not changed any of the boost tables with my tune) and I reluctantly removed the superior IX MR diverter valve and replaced the crappy, leaky plastic VIII valve. I made arrangements to acquire a high flow cat to put in place of the test pipe, and so on... but the best part of getting under STU rules is...
NEW TIRES! Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Spec. 245/40/17, as is the STU standard. Along with the Advan Neova AD07 and Bridgestone Re01R, this is one of the top 3 nationally competitive street tires for autocross. The Advans, though the fastest, are literally double the cost of the Dunlops, and prices on the RE01R soared from a competitive $153/tire to $205/tire, and had not been proven to be any better in fact *possibly* inferior in *some* areas of performance), sothat combined with the fact they placed first at national tours immediately upon their releasemade it a clear choice for me. I intended to get these sooner, but the first shipment sold out in less than two days and I missed it, so I made sure I would get ahold of the next shipment by any means necessary.
Many people disapprove of a 245 tire on a 9.5" wide wheel like mine, but this was something I was well aware of and did intentionally. It may mean "less" effective and stiffer sidewall and quicker break-away of traction, but in theory it also means slightly more tire in contact with the ground, quicker response and less deflection, and slightly smaller overall diameter. suposedly a more stretched tire also requires less camber in order to reach it's maximum grip, but I don't have any hard proof of that. In addition, when the Evo first became available in the US, someone won nationals on the same setup, so I knew it couldn't be that bad. I knew the tire would be a bit stretched, but it was not as much as I expected.
Now that I have enjoyed the benefit of how inferior street tires can amplify mistakes and poor driving technique, I feel that there is some much-needed grip to be gained and maybe even some unsprung weight to be lost by switching to a narrower, better compound tire.
