86 and Vig must have missed the part where I accurately distilled track performance down to as few criteria as possible AND explained wide tires in a way that hopefully makes sense. See my previous post, and if you have any questions, we can have an intelligent adult discussion about it. ��
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Wind Breezes
Power, weight, grip, and to a lesser extent drag, make a laptime. Handling is optional, although I bet this car probably handles pretty well.
Re: the discussion above, the reason the car uses really fat tires is because for a given weight and power level, that allows them to use a softer compound without destroying it. You could use 2 inch wide tires made from the same compound, and they would have a very similar grip until the point they overheat / the car tears them apart which would probably happen immediately.
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To expand on the tire thing, you have two main components to tire grip. Classical friction, which is mostly* independent of surface area, and mechanical keying, which does depend to some extent on surface area. Mechanical keying is where the little bits of rubber actually interlock with the rough tarmac. This goes away when there's water on the surface because the little bits that would deform into the rough terrain actually micro-hydroplane and you're left with classical friction. That's why, other things equal, peak rain grip usually isn't far off peak dry grip, but continuity and progressive loss of grip are really reduced. Both classical friction and mechanical keying will increase with the softness of your tire compound. Of course, it's easy to imagine how as you make a compound softer, its resistance to mechanical abuse is reduced, so you need MORE of it to spread out a given mechanical stress, reducing mechanical strain in heavier or more powerful cars. That's the main reason why cars like this Camaro use really big tires, so they can run a softer compound for good grip without chunking or overheating it after a short time.
*This is because coefficient of friction will increase the less loaded a given piece of rubber is, but to really take advantage of this, you either need tires with an impractically big contact area, OR a really light vehicle.