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Take-Off Tires

Take-off tires, in racing, are used race tires pulled off a car with usable life left and resold cheap. In the consumer tire market the same phrase means near-new tires with under 50 miles on them.

Also called:
take-offs, takeoffs, used race tires

In practice

Search “take-off tires” and almost everything you find is about street tires: Champtires, a used-tire retailer, defines them as “tires that have been driven on for less than 50 miles” — near-new, the opposite of worn. In a race pit the word runs the other direction. Take-offs are somebody else’s spent-but-not-dead race tires, often a better-funded team’s, sold off the trailer or in a Facebook group. What you are buying is remaining tread and remaining heat cycles, and the second one is invisible. Measure the tread, put a durometer on it, and ask how many nights it ran and on what surface. If the seller cannot tell you, price it as scrap and be pleasantly surprised.

Why it matters

Take-offs are the cheapest speed in grassroots racing when you know what you are buying, and an expensive night when you do not.

Go deeper

Read the full post:

What a Season of Racing Really Costs (and How to Budget for It)

Sources

  • Take-Off Tires — Champtires — used-tire retailer defining the consumer-market meaning, “tires that have been driven on for less than 50 miles,” which is the opposite of the racing usage.