I can vouch for both the grip AND the treadwear as being excellent! I drive
what I would call aggressively on the street and these tires are more grippy
than you really need, in my opinion. What I mean is, if you like to play at
the edges of adhesion as I do, it puts those limits at pretty high speeds
for public roads. That's a great thing if you just like to stay stuck to the
pavement all the time. You pretty much will. On the treadwear side, I
believe this is why the tire is somewhat pricey, it gives grip AND
treadwear. IIRC the tires are rated at 280 treadwear and while I know that
our lovely govt regulators have not required that these #'s be completely
comparable (they are used as much for marketing by some mfr's), these tires
really do wear well for a performance tire. I'm now at about 35k with this
set and approaching (~at) the treadwear bars. They are still fine, I've just
got to pay attention in the wet as they go away. I've been considering
something with a higher treadwear rating and a cheaper price so that I can
get even more bang (miles) for my buck AND be able to slide around just a
bit more. Any ideas for me? With the kind of life of the Goodyears, I may
just go with them again.

Chris
99BBB

Tirerack only has one of them, and when I e-mailed them to ask
about availability they gave no indication that they would ever
be able to get any more.  I should have bought a set last fall
when Tire Rack had them in stock. :/

Discount tire shows them as special order items that are
"usually available in 2-3 days".  I'll give Discount Tire a
try. I'm half expecting them to tell me they can't get them
either...

The sites appear to be similar superficially, but there are two
significant differences:

Pricing.

 The F1's are $135 each at www.discounttiredirect.com and $160
 each at discounttire.com

Ship To.

 At discounttire.com, they'll only ship to a Discout Tire
 retail store, and you have to pay them for mounting and
 balancing (I assume they don't care whether you actually let
 them mount the tires, but you have to pay for it.)

  At www.discounttiredirect.com, they'll ship to anywhere you
  want.  After some bad experiences with big chain shops
  (Tires Plus), I'm a little paranoid about who I let mess
  with my car.

That adds up to about a $150 difference between
discounttire.com and discounttiredirect.com.  I wasn't paying
close attention and went first to discounttire.com and was a
bit annoyed that you were offered a much better deal that I
was. :)
 

There's a 10% discount for buying online.  At
www.discounttiredirect.com I don't see anyway to buy other than
online, so presenting the pricing that way seems a bit odd.

I would have happily paid a little extra at TR because of the
good experiences I've had with them in the past, but they
didn't have the tires in stock and were unwilling/unable to
order them.