Tread carefully

It’s not just the drivers who need to look after the tyres, for as our in-depth guide to getting the most from them shows, engineers can also do much to make sure the race rubber is being used to its full potential

- RICARDO DIVILA

The running of a racecar entails the management of many components and fields: structures, engines, aerodynamics, damping, gearing, vehicle dynamics, geometry, child psychology (applied to the driver), and the supply of coffee to the engineers. But, apart from that last one, the one that will give the biggest returns is using your tyres to their best capability.

Tyres are the essential link between the vehicle and the ground through the contact patch, where everything happens, and most of the other items are optimised around this.

As the tyre gets loaded vertically (through transfer or aero) or laterally (cornering) and longitudinally (braking and accelerating) it will continuously change its shape and size. This is what you control through pressures, cambers and roll-couples. This, in turn, will give your racecar its handling and grip. Have more power? It will have to go through the tyres. Need to turn it, and how fast you corner? It is the relationship between the four contact patches that will determine how well you do so. Need to finish the race and win? How you use and save your tyres will determine your probability of achieving this. They are then, very important.

Black magic

The fact that they are round and black is just a minor thing, really; there is a lot more to a tyre than its appearance. Yet that can also give you a read-out on what is happening if you look at the contact patch closely.

The sheer amount of engineering, chemistry and preparation for repeatability that goes into tyres is directly related to how they work. Always bear in mind that everything is non-linear with rubber, and because of the chemistry and pneumatics it is a bit of a black art, dependent on track conditions, weather, the type of race or session, and driver use or abuse.