HRE Performance Wheels | Luxury Street Motorsport

If you’ve been following our pre-season race team coverage, you should be familiar with Rhys Millen and his team’s Veloster Rallycross program. Both Rhys and our new R43 wheels made their first appearance this weekend in Irwindale. Below is the story from the RMR blog:

In their debut races, the Veloster RallyCross cars proved to be extremely reliable. This allowed the RMR crew to focus on improving the setup for drivers Millen and Dodd. Millen won his first B Main door-to-door heat to start the day off strong. Despite the team’s ability to adapt to changing weather and track conditions with chassis setup adjustments, the tire choices proved to be the major difference between our setup and the winning teams, resulting in laps nearly 0.5 second slower.

The team’s tire sponsor, Hankook, was unable to supply the correct tire compound for the Irwindale track surface in time for the event leaving no choice but to resort to a contingency tire package. In addition, the drivers found that the transmission gear ratio selections made launching difficult. The original launch gear (1st) was too short – causing excessive wheel spin; whereas the 2nd gear ratio was too tall to launch with. Both cars will feature improved launch gear ratios for the next event.

Both Millen and Dodd are optimistic for the next event, as the cars were quick in the technical sections – only sacrificing speed in the longer banked turn sections. With an improved tire and transmission ratio selection, the Hyundai Veloster RallyCross cars should be very competitive at the next event in Snoqualmie, WA on April 15-16, 2011. Full race coverage of the Irwindale event will air April 17 on ESPN2.

HRE wishes both Millen and Dodd the best of luck as the season continues. Stay tuned for updates from Round 2! For more photos and info check out the story posted by Drew Phillips on Autoblog.