So I must be really good or someone likes me enough to test out some new Mini-z tires from Atomic Racing. These tires are from Atomic Racing in Japan, they have been making Mini-z after market parts for a good few years. Unfortunately their F1 tires didn’t work all that well and with the upcoming season for Mini-z they are looking to improve their tires and bring another tires choice to Mini-z drivers.

I’m currently using on my F1 Mini-z Kyosho tires, 20’s for the front and 10’s for the rears (the lower the number the softer the tires). This gives me a small amount of push going into a corner and enough grip coming out. I tend to drive the car on the more aggressive side. I’m using a programable remote KO-Propo EX-10 so I can tune the car to my style easily. For this test I did not change any of my settings of my car or remote. New tires usually need to be scrubbed in a little to get them to preform well. The Kyosho tires I am currently using have been scrubbed in and preform very well. My Mini-z F1 has a stock PCB and is running a Atomic Stock motor, also i’ve got various after market parts installed.

So new tires in hand I headed over to Racing Devil Hobbies in Richmond BC to run on their track and use their lap timing system. The track system is RCP which is a textured foam surface with foam rails, great grip and the foam rails won’t damage the cars when you unexpectedly hit them.

To get a base down for the test I ran 2-4 minute heats with the Kyosho tires.

These tires are about 5 races old, and just started to work really well. Here is my best time with the Kyosho tires, there was no other cars on the track so I had it all to myself.

32 Laps / 7.60sec Pace / 6.85sec Best Lap time

So with the car running the way I like it, it’s was time to put on the Atomic tires. I did not change any setting with the car or remote, just installed the tires. I received 2 sets of front and rear tires, I don’t know the rubber compound on the tires but they were labeled #1 and #2 for the front tires, #3 and #4 for the rears. From feel the #3 and #1 set are softer than the #4 and #2 tires.

And here is an up close comparison of the Kyosho tires to the Atomic tires. Kyosho on the left and Atomic on the right.

And installed on the car. Wow nice and shiny, which usually means very slick until scrubbed in.

New tires usually need to be run a good couple of times, these however felt good after the first lap. After a few more test laps I noticed that the tires picked up every spec of dust on the track. Even so the car didn’t feel like they were new tires, they held the same lines as the scrubbed Kyosho tires. This didn’t effect the handling of the car at all. This time the track had 2 other cars running so I had to deal with traffic a few times. I ran both sets of soft tires (#3 and #1) which worked quite well, but didn’t give me the amount of push I’m used to going into a corner. I than tried the 2 sets of harder tires(#2 and #4), going into a corner they felt good but felt like I was on ice coming out of a corner. I put the soft rear tires on and the car came alive! I had a setup I could race with #2 on the front and #3 on the rear, so harder on the front and softer on the rear.

I ran a few more times and was able to put down some decent times very close to the Kyosho tires.

31 Laps / 7.92sec Pace / 6.78sec Best Lap time

Due to traffic I wasn’t able to put down as many laps, but I did put down a faster Best Lap time. These new tires from Atomic Racing are a huge step up from their last attempt at F1 tires for Mini-z racing. They didn’t need to be scrubbed in at all, were not affected by any dust on the track and I felt confident with them on to drive without changing any settings to the car or the remote. Now thats plug and play. I did notice a two minor things that could be improved with the tires. First the sidewalls are too thin, this lead to the tires rolling on the wheels after a hard run. Second they didn’t have any grooves like real F1 tires, so for the scale model enthusiast this could be an issue. Other than that the tires worked great out of the package, no scrubbing needed and I didn’t have to change anything on the car. I hope the production tires Atomic Racing puts out are this good.

I’ll be racing these tires in an up coming Atomic sponsored race in November this year, and they will defiantly see more track time before that.

…gaskin

If you haven’t noticed that my articles have been down in the past few weeks, you aren’t a regular reader. Yes I’m the first to admit that I’m lazy sometimes, and can be a top notch procrastinator. But I do have my reasons, allergies, too much beer in the fridge, driving the Skyline too much, washing the Skyline too much and researching a new car (350Z or a G53)

I will be posting daily again, and hope to hit the site with a few more reviews and maybe a contest or two. So keep the bookmark and check back, maybe you’ll be sporting a cool top quality gaskinracing.com shirt at your next BBQ. Now thats ultimate cool factor, unless of course your driving a Smart Car.

…gaskin

So I’ll hit quick and dirty, I’ve been enjoying my first summer off in years. I was able to golf weekly, hit the beach daily and drive ticket free (for the most part…) all summer. Now with the kids back in school and settled in I’m able to gain some computer time and start the articles again.

Hope you summer was as enjoyable as mine!

…gaskin