Tires NANKANG or KENDA

Nankang NS-2R. Semislick tyre made for endurance.

With one set of this I made more than 1.000km on track.

And they are cheap.

I had a set of Nankang NS-25 UHP tires on my mazda 3 turbo sedan. They were great tires and handled really well. Got about 30k miles out of them. I was pretty pleased, they even did alright in snow.

So to create some perspective, my AR1’s on a small light car (Miata), lasted for 5 track days. Assuming an average of 20 mins per session, and around four sessions in morning and four in afternoon, we can assume I’m doing around 160 minutes or driving per day. So in theory I put 13 hours on those tyres!

Just got a set of Kenda Vezda this week, so I can’t really say much about them yet. This is the third time I have gotten Kenda. The last set was Kenda Kenectica, and I got over 50,000 miles out of them. They seem to be a pretty decent brand for being on the reasonably priced side. They lasted a lot longer than the Coopers that were on it before that.

I’ve used Nankang plenty of times on my older cars, they were fine. Drove fine in wet, drove fine in dry, no louder than any other tires.

I think it really depends on the car. A fresh set of 13” AR-1 will last 2000-3000km on track on my dad’s Caterham.

Cheap Kenda tires will be heavy and not made terribly well. Not to the point of being unsafe, but there is a noticeable difference in performance between a cheap Kenda tire and something like a Continental race king or Vittoria mezcal.

In my limited experience with them i'd say that they are marginally better than Toyo's r888r over a single lap but require some tuning set up to not overheat.

I had some Kendas on a K75 a decade or so ago and they were garbage.

On my '16 RT, the dealer installed a new set of Kenda KM1 sport touring tires when they prepped it to sell. I've put a couple hundred miles on the tires now, and I'm not crazy about them. Above 55mph, the entire bike feels like it's "squirming" slightly. You can feel a little instability in your hands, almost like you're riding on a highway with rain grooves.