Tire squeal on the limit.

LupinYonder · Mar 18, 2015

Hi Race Department, don't post here often but anyway..

So I notice on a lot of youtube videos of people driving fast in AC that there is often very audible tire squeal. Now often when I drive I try to be as smooth as possible and avoid such scrubbing of the tires.

Recently though I've started to suspect that I'm under using the grip available in the tires. Now I know I shouldn't aim to get that noise as it would probably indicate I'm overdriving the car.

Anyway to the point, can I use the tire squeal noise and an indicator of available grip left and If I don't here this sound, is there more grip to be had from the tires ? am I driving under the limit ?

ouvert · Mar 18, 2015

Well it depends how much you need to go easy on your tires... In qualifying I usually overdrive car little bit but if there is one hour race ahead squeeling through every corner may not be best way..

Rick Malm · Mar 18, 2015

Like Ouvert says. Clearly a trade off with tire life.
You might download the skidpad 4 track. Put you car on one of the circles, like 75m
and slowly increase your throttle holding your steering angle constant to stay on the
circle and listen to the tires as you increase your speed. You could also add gMeter to your display but I have found it reads a little low but you might calibrate what you hear with the g values. Or use acti can capture the telemetry like I have attached from tatuusfa.
In my plot at about 139km/h I could not longer keep the car on the circle as the radius got larger. See the Steering angle stop having small corrections. The sound continued to increase as the speed increases as I held the steering constant. Notice the tire temp
and slip angle keeps increasing as I scrub off more and more rubber. Finally went off the pad.

LupinYonder · Mar 18, 2015

Thanks for the replies and thank you Rick.
I have skidpad all ready, should have done this experiment myself but oh well. I guess the conclusion is that for hot lapping, a bit of tire squeal is no bad thing as your driving on the limit but in a long race more than 5 laps ish, its best to look after the tires. This makes sense.

ouvert · Mar 18, 2015

If you are in longer race you're probably putting on medium or hard tires so 5+ laps should worry you.. There probably is app showing tire wear so do some empirical experiment if you want..