How can powerful cars easily do a burnout, but also take off from the line without spinning their tires?

Question

How can powerful cars easily do a burnout, but also take off from the line without spinning their tires?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Comes down to the tires. A burnout is typically caused by a shock-load of torque, which causes the initial loss of traction. Once slip starts, that threshold torque to maintain slip is lower than the threshold to go from grip to slip.

If you were to put arbitrary numbers on it, a performance tire can maintain grip so long as you apply less than 200 torques. Stay at 199 and you’ll never spin. But once it breaks loose, it only requires 150 torques to keep slipping, and you have to drop below that to regain traction. So a driver looking to maintain maximum acceleration is going to work the throttle to maintain 199 torques.