Lowering springs or wide tires and wheels?

I'm starting autocross this season and i have some extra money to get some upgrades for my car but I'm not sure what to get. I have konig rims currently on my car but I would like to keep them for show. My two options are either getting another set of wheels I could use that are nice and wide or get lowering springs and use my steel wheels. I have a hyundai that is decently low to the ground and takes tunrs pretty well stock. Which would work better for me?Lowering springs or wide tires and wheels?
First off, as someone who has been autocrossing for 20 years and been teaching autocross skills to novice drivers for the last dozen years in our car clubs schools I can not stress enough that if you are just starting out and your car is sound DON'T SPEND ANY MONEY ON IT.



Autocross is 95% driver and 5% car. Improve the former, not the latter.



Learn how to drive the thing first, then you can consider changing it based on what you learned driving it. If you are going to spend money on the car anyway no matter what I say the thing that will actually improve times dramatically is tires. Tires can take seconds off your runs. Everything else takes fractions of seconds off your run times. But before you buy tires figure out what class you are going to run in. For the last 8 years I have run in Stock class because that is where the vast majority of the really good drivers run. Modifications in stock class are very limited - basically any tire that will fit on a stock size wheel (the wheels themselves need not be stock, just the same width and diameter as stock) without modifying the fenders. The difference in times on a nominal 60-second course between my car with its original 215/45VR17 Continental Sport Contacts and the 225/45R17 91W Kuhmo Ecsta V710 street legal competition tires I use for autocross is probably about 3 seconds. That's huge. You don't get that kind of improvement from any other modification.



If you end up like those people who come to each event with a different mod on their car you will always be chasing the car istead of learning how to drive it properly since you won't have the same car from event to event.Lowering springs or wide tires and wheels?
light weight wheel and sticky tires with a stiff sidewall will improve handling much more than springs.



I would only get springs if you are doing the whole suspension. springs and shocks/dampers