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The filled fenders give Project G20 a look that would impress the Hella-Flush crowd. The ones that are into “luxury” subcompacts from the early 90s, that is.Once mounted and dialed in for wear, we immediately noticed our lap times dropping when compared to the Proxes RA1s we had run previously. At California Speedway last year, our car turned in a best time of 1:57.6, which dropped to a 1:56.6 this year on Proxes RRs. That drop in lap time is even more impressive given that air temperatures were almost 20 degrees hotter, and that our car had developed a high rpm misfire that was later diagnosed as an incorrect static timing setting. The second race, with timing set up correctly, we were out to drop our times further still, only to find that we had lost the seal in one of the brake calipers (due to piston knockback from a failing wheel bearing) and limped the car through the rest of the race to maintain position. During the first race on the RRs at Willow Springs, our car churned out solid and consistent lap times in the 1:35 range, putting us in 2nd place against our 245mm wide C71/A6 compound equipped competition.
Fat swaybars and trail braking can make for frequent rear wheel lockups. Luckily, this didn’t faze the Proxes RR too much, as it never showed corrds from a lockup. Trust us, we were NOT friendly to them while pressing for position.Pure lap times are not the Proxes RR’s strongest suit. Although not an endurance race by any means, the 40 minute race sessions we run do require a certain amount of tire management to stay alive throughout the race. Our car, despite having considerably smaller rubber than the field, was able to maintain pressure on the competition through most of the race due to the durability and fade resistance of the Proxes RR, especially when compared to the autocross-oriented tires run by the rest of the field. Indeed, the best strategy for making a pass with the RRs against these tires was to keep the pressure up and force the driver in front to overheat their tires, then simply motor by on the following straight. No histrionics, no hoontastic passes with all 4 locked up, just simply glue yourself to a bumper for 5-6 laps until their tires are greased up (or even visibly chunking) and make the pass without drama. Given more mechanical grip from more camber and wider rubber, we have no doubt that our lap times would fall even more.
With the Proxes RR’s more durable compund, we were able to keep the pressure up on the competition’s softer tires despite our skinnier rubber.While the Proxes RR does use a softer compound than the R888 and RA1, we still observed Toyo’s legendary ability to make an R-compound tire that wears like iron. Despite being thoroughly abused on our wheelspin-generating torque monster with a not-so-empathetic-driver, the Toyos lasted a solid three weekends before we felt they needed to be retired. If these were hotlapping sessions, we would’ve run them longer, but because the following session was a race session, we decided not to risk cording a tire and swapped them out.
After an entire race weekend and an eight session trackday, our Proxes RR’s have fulfilled Toyo’s legendary ability to make a fast tire that wears like iron.Overall, Toyo has once again found the magic compromise in the wear vs. lap times game, while maintaining its ease of use and accessibility found in previous offerings. That it’s considerably faster than its other DOT offerings makes this tire a clear winner in our minds.
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