12 Hours of Thunderhill on One Set of Hankook Ventus RS4 Tires

Can you find a 200 treadwear track tire that will last a 12 hour race on a front-wheel drive car? It seemed like an impossible task, but on 19 September I raced the 12 Hours of Thunderhill with GoGo Gear Racing in their Honda Civic, on a set of Hankook Ventus RS4s, with the goal of doing the whole race on one set. We did it, and the fronts still had about half their tread left at the end.

The race

The 12 Hours of Thunderhill is a NASA NorCal team endurance race at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Willows, California. It's daylight only, so the green flag drops at 7:30 in the morning and the chequered flag comes out at 7:30 in the evening, and the cars are split into classes by lap time. The tire rules are open, so you can run anything up to full slicks, but you can only change two tires per pit stop, which means every set you go through costs you time.

I was driving for GoGo Gear Racing, who have been racing since 1994 and usually run in the US Touring Car Championship. The car was their #30 Civic hatchback, and on a front-wheel drive car the front tires do the steering, most of the braking and all of the driving. They're the ones that wear out, and they're what decides whether you get to the end on one set.

Why the Ventus RS4

After a bit of research we settled on the Hankook Ventus RS4, and Hankook kindly supplied a set in 225/45 ZR17. That happens to be exactly the size I used in our 2021 track day 200TW tire test, where the RS4 finished 4th of 8. It was about 1.7 seconds a lap off the fastest tire, but it had very good heat management and very low predicted wear, and at the time I wrote that with nearly 7mm of starting tread it would make an excellent endurance racing tire. Thunderhill was the chance to find out if that was true.

Six hours in, no rotation

The car was set up for understeer, which normally means the fronts take even more punishment. Even so, after six hours the front tires were looking fresh, so we decided not to rotate them and left them on for the rest of the race.

The hub failure

After nine hours we had a rear hub failure. It took out one of the rear tires and cost us about an hour in the pits, and with it first place in class. That's endurance racing, and it had nothing to do with the tires, but it still hurts.

What was left after 12 hours

At the end of the race the front Hankooks, which had done the full 12 hours without being rotated, still had between 3/32" and 4/32" of tread left, which is about 2.4 to 3.2mm. That's roughly half worn, on the driven and steering axle of a front-wheel drive race car, after 12 hours of racing. I honestly didn't think that was possible when we started.

Verdict

The Ventus RS4 probably isn't the fastest of the 200 treadwear tires, and our own testing agrees with that, but it's definitely one of the hardest wearing. If you're just getting into track days and don't want your running costs to be high, it's a solid option. If outright lap time matters more to you than how long the tires last, have a look at our 2026 streetable track tire test.

Thanks

A big thank you to Hankook for supplying the tires, and to GoGo Gear Racing for having me in the car. If you want to try your hand at endurance racing, get in contact with them.