When you Google why are f1 tires smooth, the answer is no tread means more surface area, so better grip, but when you Google why do street tires have grooves, the same answer comes up. I’m confused. Also, is this a physics question, engineering or technology? Lol
In: Engineering
In addition to what other people said about them only using smooth tires on smooth **dry** tracks, F1 cars also drive so fast that the tires reach insanely hot temperatures, and they gain more grip in a window of optimal temperatures that are much higher than the average car. If an F1 car is on super cold tires, they won’t have grip, and too hot temperatures, the grip is there but goes away fast as the tire falls apart.
Also, F1 races in the rain sometimes and when that happens their “wet” tires have grooves like normal car tires. [Here](https://cdn.racingnews365.com/_1125x633_crop_center-center_85_none/Pirelli-Wet-Japanese-GP-2022.jpg?v=1668188769) is a picture of them.
When you’re driving on a wet surface, the water you’re driving over needs to move out of the way so that the tire’s rubber can make contact with the road. Without groves, it’s much harder for the water to get out of the way, it has to somehow get all the way to the edge of the tire. With groves, the water can just move an inch to the left into one of the groves, so that the treads can make full contact with the pavement. When you know conditions will be dry, you can do away with the grooves so that more rubber can be in contact with the road.
Because F1 tires (typically) are only used in dry conditions on a manicured track. In fact, when it rains, F1 cars do swap to tires with tread on them to clear the water out.
The answer you quoted was right. On *dry* pavement, smooth tires offer the most amount of grip due to increased surface area.
However in your personal car, you’re not just driving on dry pavement. You’re driving in rain, you’re driving in snow, you’re driving on gravel. If you had ‘slick’ tires you would have zero grip on these surfaces.
Your car tires need to be versatile enough to work in 100 different conditions whereas F1 slicks only need to be used on dry pavement. If you put slicks on your corolla you certainly would get better grip on a nice summer day. You’d also almost immediately die when it rains or snows.
F1 tries are extremely soft so they can mold themselves to the surface to keep flat. They also deteriorate extremely quickly.
Commercial tires typically are at a higher pressure and designed to last longer, so don’t mold themselves as much. If they were completely smooth as well, they would have no grip if there was a rapid change of surface. The grooves are there to increase the surface area in loose surfaces such as dirt or water.
If it’s raining or wet at an F1 race they switch to tires that actually have grooves in them.
We as normal people don’t have tire change crews waiting at home so the default is that we need tires with grooves for when rain or snow is in the forecast.
First off; F1 tires are designed to work as slick tires. The smooth rubber on the bottom of a road tire isn’t designed to be the primary contact source to the road and as a result is not very thick. When your tire is bald, you’re on the verge of running out of rubber and the tire failing. Now as to why we don’t drive around with road tires designed to be slicks…
F1 slick tires are also dangerous and slippery as soon as the track becomes wet. You can look up videos of what happens when they try slicks on a track that is too wet. Lando Norris in Russia 2021 comes to mind. They also don’t work very well when they are cold and they are completely useless on anything that isn’t a solid surface like grass or gravel.
Basically, a slick tire is designed to give as much surface contact as possible to a smooth hard surface. They also have to be heated up to temperature that would melt your road tires in order to function properly and they work much better when there is already lots of rubber laid down on the track. Basically they are designed to almost chemically react to the surface and leave a trail of rubber as the go. This is part of why they only last for like 100 miles or less.
Some higher end performance cars do offer “summer tires” that are more slick than a normal road tire but again, are really dangerous to drive in variable conditions, and you’re supposed to change to winter tires.
So in short: slick tires work very well in a very controlled setting, but aren’t versatile enough to be useful to road cars because they don’t work well in the cold, rain, dirt, grass, gravel, uneven road surfaces or even dusty street surfaces. They need clean direct contact to tarmac.
If payment is free of dirt, oil, and water, everyone could use “slicks” and have more traction than they have now. As soon as any sort of debris is introduced, the slicks would slide out.
The grooves are meant to displace water. Without them a solid layer of water can form under the tire that has nowhere to go because it can’t get out of the way fast enough and suddenly you lose all grip as you skate on a layer of water. It’s called hydroplaning. Slick tires are illegal for road use because they’re dangerous if you encounter water, which is likely even in summer for a multitude of reasons.
On racing tracks however the conditions are controlled, so they use slick tires to get maximum grip. A lot more goes into grip than just surface area. When it’s raining they use racing tires with grooves.
F1 cars drive on virtually perfectly smooth roads. Therefore, smooth tires would have the best surface area on the smooth road.
Public roads not only are bumpy, but they have rocks, dirt, water, and ice. So a smooth tire would have less contact, and therefore less grip. So treads allow the tire to fall into the cracks and bumps and get more surface area.
In short, treads would be slippery on a smooth road, and smooth tired will be slippery on bumpy roads.
F1 wants as much of the surface area of a tyre to touch the ground as possible because that increases grip. And part of why they have such good grip is because there is so much downward force on the tires. Regular cars aren’t putting nearly that much force on them.
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