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
It’s for traction. More surface area on the ground is more traction. They also warm the tires up (by driving side to side for a lap before the race) and when those tires get hot they get very sticky, it’s a different type of rubber than your tires.
Street tires are made under the assumption they will face all conditions in their lifetime.
F1 tires won’t even survive half of the race. They pick and choose the tires that will be the fastest in that specific scenario. They can and do run tires with grooves. You have to understand it’s not dangerous for them, they simply might be half a second slower on each lap with them. Believe it or not the other team gaining half a second each lap will soon enough have enough of a lead that they can stop and change tires and still beat you when you don’t change.
Nobody on the road is supposed to be thinking about how they can get to work 0.1 seconds faster, nor could they be bothered to change tires based on conditions each time they get in the car.
So… essentially race tires are made to be as fast and efficient as possible. Street tires are made to last as long as possible, as safe as possible, as well as comfortable and quiet. F1 only cares about speed and safety.
The groves are there to provide room where the water should go if it is wet. F1 selects their tires according to the weather conditions; while daily use of your car does not.
Learning to play music is learning to speak a language. The notes, chords, scales, and rhythms are the letters, words, grammar, and syntax of that language.
F1 cars change to tires with treads when it’s wet out.
Normal drivers don’t have a pit crew they can go to on the fly at the first sign of wet conditions, so the water has nowhere to go from under the tires of there are no treads, resulting in no traction, which means you can’t stop.
Normal cars don’t need the tiny performance boost from having smooth tires in dry conditions, but they really need to avoid the massive performance loss in wet conditions.
Downforce
F1 cars have so much downforce with their aerodynamics, the surface area of the tire gives more grip/control of the car.
Using treaded tires in the rain is to give the water a path to escape.
They actually have to warm up their tires so the tires become stickier resulting in more grip. Normal Car drivers don’t put the same amount of prep and warm up, so they use a directly designed tire that accounts for that.
The difference comes down to surface type and condition that those tires are made for.
On a completely smooth, dry surface, tires with no treads give the traction as you have a lot of surface area making contact with the road. However, when it is wet, or slippery, slick tires will hydroplane, and give no traction.
As opposed to road tires with treads. When on a dry, smooth road, regular tires have less grip because of reduce contact surface area. However, in wet, slippery, or snowy conditions, water and snow flow into the treads which will then flow into the tripes and ultimately directed to the side of the tires. Basically water surface tension is broken to allow more rubber that is not part of the treads to make contact with the road, giving traction.
The grooves in normal tires are to evacuate water under the wheel when it’s raining, as otherwise the water is going to form a layer between the tire and the road surface, causing a loss of traction and subsequent loss of control; this phenomenon is called Aquaplaning.
The “normal” F1 tires, so called “slicks”, doesn’t have any grooves because A: It maximizes the surface area the tire has with the road which gives you more traction, and B: The organizer can plan the race day based on weather forecast, so there won’t be any water on the road to cause issue with Aquaplaning.
There are F1 tires with groves, which are called “wet” tires. These are used for when a race day happens during the rain, as slick tires can’t be used due to the aforementioned Aquaplaning.
Fun fact: In some very specific conditions, the wet tires of F1 cars, due to the wear they experience can become slick tires as the thicker part of the tire, and so the grooves, wears away. These tires are then called Slintermediate, a hyphenation of Slick and Intermediate, with Intermediate being the name of the wet tire. There’s also another wet tire called Hard iirc but that’s getting off track and a rabbit hole for you to discover.
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