Falken Tires: Azenis RT615K+ vs Azenis RT660

[ModdedMK7.5]

Hello everyone!

I need some help and/or some advice between these two summer performance 200 tread wear tires. I'm currently using the Bridgestone Potenza RE71R tires as my autocross setup, but they are almost reaching their end in tread life and grip. Many folks in my region recommend trying out Falken tires as a "best bang for the buck" setup. I tried researching for reviews about these tires, but couldn't find anything useful. All I know about these two tires are that I think the RT615K+ is more of an endurance racing type that cost less and the RT660 is more of a time trial type and cost a little more. I know there are alternatives for good 200tw tires, but my mind is set towards Falken. Any help or experience with these two tires would much appreciated.

Many Thanks!

 

[DerHase]

RT660 is better than the RT615K+ in every way except for price.

The 660 will be comparable to your RE71R (correct it's not the newer *RS* right?) except they'll last longer, and won't come up to temp QUITE as quickly. They're not quite as knife-edgey as far as exceeding grip limits go also. They're also a lot better about edge wear which is helpful on these cars. If you do indeed have the old RE71R, then those tires haven't been manufactured since 2019... so pretty much anything new should be noticeably faster. The old RE71Rs would fall off a cliff performance-wise at 100-120ish auto-x runs. The RT660s do the same supposedly, but I've pretty much only used mine on track which definitely heat cycles them out. Mine were like that towards the end of my last set. (Note I was doing a bunch of autocross from 2012-2018, then pretty much did nothing but track stuff from 2019-present, hence why I never really autocrossed on the 660s, but did on the old RE71R).

I had RT660s on my GTI that I ran for 7 weekends on track last year (6 at VIR, 1 at Summit on the Jefferson circuit). I still had 5-6/32nds on all of them, just with worn edges that I sold to another guy who got another couple days out of them (though they were starting to heat cycle out and you could tell). I've also burned through 3 sets of RT660s on my last car (an originally STF prepped Mazda2, turned track car, turned into crashed track car), and 2 sets of RE71R(original, not RS).

I've not run the RT615K+ on my own car, but drove on them at NCCAR in an EG Civic set up for Gridlife Street class TT. They were fun, seemed to be happy with lots of slip angle even though they don't have a ton of outright grip. If you don't care about being competitive, they're not a terrible tire. I don't know how they do in the rain. RT660s aren't bad by any means, but they're not outlandishly good or anything.

If you want the fastest auto-x tire you'll basically need the A052 or the new RE71RS. Coincidentally they're also the two best in rain if at full tread depth and not pouring rain/standing puddles. For a dedicated rain tire the Conti ECS (and ECS 02 now) or the Michelin PS4S are supposedly the go-to tires.

RT660/Rival S 1.5/Direzza ZIII/V730/Nfera Sport R are a bit slower and all relatively similar in performance with some being better for certain cars than others.

Then 615K+ is going to be slower than all of them.

Hankook RS4 and Conti ExtremeContactForce are endurance racing compounds. Hard to get heat into autocrossing, I wouldn't even consider them for that. Last forever though. RS4s on my last car would outlast RE71R about 4x (8 days vs 2 days on a very abrasive road course, NCCAR before the kink was added). If you can get heat into them (hot day, dual driver car), they might be about even with the 615K+ if I had to take a wild guess.


Honestly I think the RT660 is pretty much the perfect do-everything tire. They're reasonably quick, last reasonably long, don't suck in the wet, and they're not crazy expensive. I'm on V730s for track stuff now, but may go back to RT660s next time, or RE71RS. The V730s were ~$650 for the set and were hard to pass up, and supposedly last longer than the RT660 though being just slightly slower.