There could be something to what you are saying Jason.
I know at the end of the day, Ron actually thought that the Hoosiers were worn out. Instead the central grooves were filled in with OPR! The rubber was literally melted onto the rear tires. There was a little bit on the fronts but nothing compared to the rears!
I don't know how long the OPR would stay on tires, but I was sideways for the first two runs including the big, top-of-the-hill sweeper so I assumed that the tires would have been cleaned off by that time. Maybe they were overheated by then?
In any case, I tried everything I could conjure up to keep the car going by car set-up (shocks, sway bar settings) and then finally resorting to an easy launch off the line on the last run on Sunday (in order to not heat up the tires) and driving extra carefully in order to avoid sliding the rear. By the time I got to the typical down-hill, off-camber, right turn at the far end (NE corner), the grip was diminished, front and rear - especially the rear.
Coming into the slalom, I was getting wheel spin through 1st gear like a drag race car, short-shifted to 2nd in the slalom in order to get traction and still spun the rears in 2nd despite being out of VTEC on the S2000 - think power of a Civic! After that it was slide-city all the way to the finish.
It was an interesting experience. I'm still not sure how that can be avoided in the future - ideas? I note that George and Joey did not seem to have this problem - George? The reason I say that is because I could not hold anywhere near full throttle around the big top-of-the-hill turn - Saturday nor Sunday on any of my runs.
Maybe our tires got too hot and consequently picked up more rubber than normal? I remember putting my hand on the tires after the 1st/2nd runs both days and they were not overly hot after the first runs. Mind you, we watered the tires for all runs following the 1st run (this is excluding the 1st one). In fact on the last run I watered the tires doubly to see if that would help (marginally better but only for about 1/2 of the run).
Also, I have run many times at San Diego over the past couple of years and never experienced this effect before.
One last thought: The karts ran directly before my runs as well as some XP cars which may have been on slicks.
Reijo