17 and 18 inch drag radials

I have 18x9.5" Y2ks for rear wheels and was thinking about getting a set of drag radials for them after I change my heads, cam, and various other things. All the local F body guys that I hang out with told me to not even bother with a DR with 17" or 18" tires, they don't have the sidewall necessary to get traction and are barely more effective than street tires with over 370rwhp. How true is this? I see a lot of the guys on the forums running 275/40/17 Nitto555r so I know there will be plenty of people who will chime in on this.

Don't forget the larger your wheels are, the less MPH you will generate at the track and smaller HP numbers on the dyno. Simple physics.

I used to run 17" BFG DRs and was able to hook a few high 1.6s and a bunch of 1.7s, but it was very inconsistent and I couldn't truely "hit it" out of the hole. I switched to a set of 16" factory wheels and 255 50 R16 M/T radials and now I'm consistent 1.55s and can floor it out of hole...I switched from a 275 40 17 to the 255 50 16s and found that the smaller tire with the taller sidewall will hook much better. The "front to back" contact patch of the tire, which is greater with the tire with more sidewall, is more important, to a degree, than a wider tire with less sidewall...If you are set on using the 18s check out the 265 18s in the BFG G Force DR. They hooked pretty well on a friends LPE 383 Corvette...

--Alan

I used to run 17" BFG DRs and was able to hook a few high 1.6s and a bunch of 1.7s, but it was very inconsistent and I couldn't truely "hit it" out of the hole. I switched to a set of 16" factory wheels and 255 50 R16 M/T radials and now I'm consistent 1.55s and can floor it out of hole...I switched from a 275 40 17 to the 255 50 16s and found that the smaller tire with the taller sidewall will hook much better. The "front to back" contact patch of the tire, which is greater with the tire with more sidewall, is more important, to a degree, than a wider tire with less sidewall...If you are set on using the 18s check out the 265 18s in the BFG G Force DR. They hooked pretty well on a friends LPE 383 Corvette...

--Alan

Thanks, that is the kind of feedback I was looking for. I knew sidewall was important but I had always thought width was the most important, man I was wrong.

The BFG T/A DR look good, only 180$ a piece. I think I'll run those as my street tire and get a set of stock 16x8s and mount some MT 27x10.5s on them for the track. 265/40/18 is so close to 275/40/18 (stock size that I have now) it makes you wonder why they don't make them in that size.