Today here in Dublin Ireland is what is called a "soft day", i.e. a soft rain falling all day long, times like this the roads have an even thin film of H2O.
I had been reading the wetter the better,
http://www.drivingdevelopment.co.uk/Drivin...r%20product.htm
thinking that would be a cool way to learn a little about car control at the limit of adhesion. I understand that the film of water on the road promoted loss of grip at an earlier and safer speed, while at the same time minimising tyre wear. Later I would wonder about that point.
A phone call to a knowledgeable friend pointed me to a disused tarmac car park, about 100 x 200 feet. It was covered with a small enough quantity of loose tarmac bits, all the more to skid on I thought.
So I have found out the rudiments of feeling the car begin o lose it, shove its tail out and then what. First efforts to countersteer were let down a little by poor throttle control, that is chickening out by backing off a lot. I found that for small losses of grip, a slight reduction of power together with a slight amount of opposite steering seemed to tidy things up reasonably
I then got a bit more vigorous. With a near tightest possible lock on, I increased the power gradually. It may be worth noting that there was a fair amount of slope of this particular car park, and predictably the car went over it's limit when gravity was pushing the car out of the circle. You could really feel the force of being shoved across the seat, and I found that at times I used my leg to brace my grip on the seat.
What usually happened was that when grip fell, I would countersteer with a fair amount of throttle. This would tend to keep the car turning at approx. the same radius as before, but the centre of the turn circle would now be pulled away with the loss of grip. I hope I am making some sense, you feel it better with your bum than hearing/saying it in words.
Thus I got lost in an excitingly dizzy world of tight lefts and rights and the odd figure eight. I now think out that I am a cheapskate; wow you should see the damage to those S02s! The rears have a groove right at the contact patch edge, plus a load of scuff damage over about 20mm in from the edge, the fronts look like some rubber eating critter has been chewing lumps off the tread blocks!
Frankly I

 

John, please take the positive and be pleased with the experience. I would say that that much tire wear is a bargain price to pay for the lesson, and vastly less expensive than an accident in the rain. Continue to use the tires until they harden or get down to the wear bars.

 

Part of the problem with getting your tyres eaten is related to pressure. When we autox on street tires, we inflate 'em fairly high to stiffen the sidewall and prevent "blowing chunks." For example, I used to run 38/34 front/rear when I autoxed on street tyres. Another part is that spinning is bad (it's slow ), so we try to minimize that too, so in a given event, we'll spin about twice, tops. When you spin, your tyres are essentially going "cross grain." They are supposed to be going forward and backward, as opposed to side to side, so they get chewed up. Stiffer sidewalls help with this a bit, too.

R/

 

Thank you chaps for your comments, they are helpful. But I can

 

Heli, the SO2s will wear very quickly in any form of extreme cornering conditions. They achieve their excellent grip by using very soft rubber which wears very easily. I'm sorry but you can't have one without the other.

 

The Bridgestones offer great performance in the dry, but are notorious in the wet, especially after a few thousand miles of wear.

 

regarding grip, or wear rate, or both?
i haven't had any scares in the wet, maybe that's because i ease back a good bit when it's wet. but WTF 6mm wide triangular chunks out of the fronts after only 10-15 mins tricking around in the wet???
i reckon about 2 hours !!!! of fast circling on damp to wet tarmac and they're bo11oxed??
can any1 corroborate this wear rate from their own experience?
TIA