It should come as no surprise that getting good short times from a stock 2010 Camaro on 20-inch wheels and street tires is no easy task. In fact, for our driver, making consistent passes proved almost impossible, as the stock wheel/tire and rearend combo would either spin the tires or engage in violent wheelhop, resulting in aborted runs and potentially broken parts. This, as you can imagine, was frustrating and somewhat embarrassing, with other people at the track constantly asking "why them 2010 Camaros can't ever run fast?" and "why are they slower than the old ones?" The answer to both questions came directly back to weight and traction. So, like any self-respecting track junkies, we set out to fix our wheelhop and wheelspin issues once and for all by adding some sticky tires, some invincible axles, and a set of bridge-truss-inspired rear tailing arms.
Our first issue was finding a tire that would work on our 2010, a task that is more complicated than it seems. First and foremost, the stock tires are tall, coming in at 28.6 inches, which means our drag radial also needed a lot of height. For comparison, the typical 275/50/15 drag radial is only 25.8-inches tall, which would look and drive horribly on a Camaro of this size. Of course, even if we could run a tire like that, it would never fit over our Brembo brakes, which seemingly need an 18-inch wheels at minimum to clear. With that information in hand, we set out to test-fit wheels and tires, finally settling on a set of used 18x9.5 C6 Z06 front wheels wrapped in a pair of massive 305/45/18 Nitto NT05R drag radials.
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