rb92673 wrote:therood wrote:Camper Van Someren wrote:They are partnered with Yokohama, who don’t make an endurance tire. Maybe they are developing a new product? That whole road mangler arrangement doesn’t make much sense to me.
They have been and it's out now: https://www.yokohamatire.com/tires/advan-neova-ad09
I only just saw the first two sets of the AD09 at Gingerman and they weren't on cars that ran all weekend so YMMV (literally), but depending on size, it's comparable in price to the Dunlop or the Continental option. I haven't read outright claims that it's meant for endurance racing, but Tire Rack's reviews last year lumped it in with the RS4 and the Continental. I asked for details and got redirected to their own page, but the construction looks pretty similar to some other 200TW endurance tires.
So get us hooked up with a Lemons buy direct program like other smaller series have!
Look, we get it and it's something Jay and I have been talking about a lot lately.
As far as we can tell, the program of the "other smaller series" is an avenue neither Lemons nor Yokohama have any interest in undertaking. We're not going to mandate people run a certain tire from a certain supplier, full stop.
We have explored other avenues with Yokohama--who like most tire companies, don't have a direct retail arm--and we have both found suppliers unwilling to take on any version of the program. We had gotten some traction with one supplier before the pandemic, but it was a pretty drawn-out process that got absolutely TNT'd by 2020. The complication of the logistics crunch during and immediately after the pandemic seems to have turned several such companies off to the idea of additional large-scale agreements (or maybe just turning them off of Lemons).
It's possible that people on the board are better connected than we and Yokohama's motorsports division are, though. If you know a Lemons person who runs a tire warehousing/supplier that is capable of shipping tires nationwide for a series with a potential current fleet of 1000+ vehicles, feel free to put me in touch with them.
Edit to add: Not trying to be snarky with that last bit. These kinds of things happen because people have an in with someone, but I also don't want to undersell the potential scale of any Lemons supply program.
Eric Rood
Everything Bagel, 24 Hours of Lemons
eric@24hoursoflemons.com