n smikle wrote:I think the OP means to the touch.
Martin Brundle or Ted Kravitz?? had said that an F1 tyre is very soft to the touch IIRC. While street tires are much harder. Made to last for thousands of kilometers Vs only a few hundred? (I know, different loadings and all but street tyres can ride over rocks etc)
You'll find that many race tires - and I'd wager the current lot of F1 tires - are very stiff to the touch... at ambient temperature. They only soften up at elevated temperature. Which is part of the reason why hardness comparisons on tires is silly.
You'd also be surprised how "soft" many passenger car tires are. Take a car to a racetrack and run some limit laps and the tires will be toast in short order. Consumer tires last for tens of thousands of miles because they're driven mostly in a straight line and only very low accelerations. Plus they have to be acceptable in wet weather, snow...
lebesset wrote:but with race tyres ,for whatever reason , they not only uses much softer, stickier compounds but also part of the curing process is at the track , hence all the talk of tyres only being good for one lap
Eh, I wouldn't say that's true. Certainly any tire or rubber that's held at elevated temperature for some amount of time the mechanical properties will change. It's rare that there are universal rules for these things but I can't think of when you'd send race tires to the track which are under-cured.
Like I alluded to above.. while passenger tires mostly drive in a straight line, there's a lot of really abusive demand on race treads. They've got to have guts. I feel like if you used undercured tires at the racetrack they'd be junk - just disintegrate. Then again with how the Pirelli tires have been...
Grip is a four letter word. All opinions are my own and not those of current or previous employers.
