Is camber gain really beneficial?

[Jersey Tom]

Bias-ply tires have been found to generate more camber thrust than radial tires

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camber_thrust

There is a HUGE difference between the phrase "bias-ply tires tend to generate more camber thrust than radial tires," and the phrase "radial tires don't benefit much from camber thrust."

Besides, camber thrust is not what gives these tires extra limit grip. Two totally different concepts.

Racing tires aren't really radial tires.

Absolutely true, but not not particularly relevant... as even street radial tires "benefit" from camber.

Negative static camber helps keep the tire RELATIVELY vertical during body roll.
And yes during body roll F1s run very little or even no net negative camber, specially for the inner wheel.

Just not true. The intent of static negative camber is to land your dynamic camber wherever you want it, which is a non-zero value - several degrees or much more to get the additional cornering force, depending on how much you can get away with given your tire manufacturer.

Besides, with kinematics... inside wheel will get extra negative camber - outside wheel loses some. With how stiffly sprung such cars are for platform control, your body roll angle and maximum camber gain through cornering is quite small.

[olefud]

A lot of good points made without getting into proprietary info. A few more points of possible interest include the downside of camber gain, i.e. braking. With dive under braking, camber gain kicks in and compromises the tire contact patch. Also, camber gain is generally obtained by l/s arm suspension, but even equal length arms differently angled can provide camber gain.

IMO camber thrust does tend to turn the tire but does not add to cornering thrust –only the contact patch generates cornering thrust. Camber helps because, as mentioned, the vehicle rolls and tends to change the tire camber. Less recognized is the distortion of the tire contact patch (slip angle) and sidewalls under hard cornering which smears and rotates the contact patch towards effective positive camber.

Finally, as a bit of a stretch, I did a bit of work with a lower level NASCAR team (West Series) to address the problem of heat gain and resulting tire pressure increase. Cold tires wanted rather more camber gain which tended to be favored since handling was so bad on cold tires. However, this compromise hot tire handling though not in a dangerous way. Never got a chance to try my theory for enhanced leak-down (no time, no testing), but it probably would be illegal now – and maybe then