Eli5 – F1 cars have smooth tyres for grip yet on a normal car this would be certain death. Why do smooth tyres give F1 cars more grip yet normal cars less grip?
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Racing tires are different from everyday driving tires in many ways. Most tired are designed to last for tens of thousands of miles or kms and operate at a wide range of temperatures, which requires them to be made of hard rubber that is only moderately sticky. They also need to perform well on imperfect surfaces like gravel or wet asphalt, so they are made with grooves that channel these things out of the way. A grooved tire only makes contact with the portion on the outside. Obviously the deepest cut of the groove doesn’t have any contact with the road. That loss of contact reduces traction but it’s worth it to make a tire that functions in wet and dry conditions.
Racing tires don’t have to worry about any of that. They can be replaced often so they use a softer, stickier rubber that provides more traction. The road conditions are usually perfect so they don’t need grooves most of the time.
If you put tires like these on your car, overall performance would increase, as long as it isn’t cold or rainy. But you’d have to replace the tires every couple of days and your gas milage would likely go down a bit, so it would be very, very expensive.
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