[thstone]

I experienced the same tire "melting" with my set of PS2's after a few sessions at the track. This is normal. The tires now might make some strange rumbling noise on the freeway until the excess melted rubber wears down - this is normal too. I actually stopped and checked because it sounded like I had a loose wheel.

In 3-4 weeks when the excess rubber has worn down, you might want to have the tires rebalanced since so much of the tread has changed due to the melting.

I found that a an alignment with as much negative camber as you can get was helpful in reducing the load and temps of the outside of the tire during hard cornering. However, it will also add more wear to the inside of the tires on a daily basis so you'll have to consider the trade offs between inside tire street wear vs outside tire track wear. Tracking a street car is all about tradeoff's!

After my PS2's wore out, I went to another high performance tire that was more track oriented and have not seen the same level of melting even on hotter track days. Look for a tire with a tread wear rating less than 200. There are several brands and models that meet this criteria such as Hankook Ventus RS-3, Kumho Ecsta XS, Bridgestone Potenza RE-11, etc. Do a search on TireRack and sort by UTQG (tire wear) and you can eval from there.

Of course, lower tread wear tires will stick and wear better on the track but also wear much faster. Another one of those darn tradeoff's!