I can understand in off-roading because they would actually bite into the ground and push against it, but if the road does not deform into the treads then wouldn’t it be better to have them slick for more surface area? why do race cars use slick tires and not consumer vehicles?
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They don’t.
But it tends to rain now and then, and you really lose grip when driving slicks in rain. So treads = grip assurance on wet road.
Normal tires need to deal with rain and water much more often than a race tire does. The channels and grooves in the tire allow water to flow out from under the main treads; if there wasn’t a space for the water to flow, it would simply stay there, forming a slippery surface and forcing your car to hydroplane over it.
The lifespan of a race tire is much shorter than consumer tires, and races can be picked for good/bad weather, so they aren’t going to need to deal with wet conditions nearly as often. For the average consumer, getting tires changed every time the weather turns would be extremely cumbersome.
Roads are full of debris, dirt, water, ec. You need a tire than can handle that, enter grooved tires.
Slicks do have better contact, but you need a dry, clean, flat road. Soon as you got some dirt, dust, some pebbles, slicks are significantly worse.
On road, they don’t. Race cars use slick tires during *dry* conditions. The treads on street tires are so that water has a place to go so that the other 80% of the wheel can get good traction on the road surface. Otherwise you run into “hydroplaning”, where the water can’t get out of the way and you get *zero* traction.
Because roads are frequently wet and dirty.
Race tracks are clean and smooth. It’s extremely dangerous to drive on slick tires in wet conditions, or if there is sand on the track. The slick tires have better traction on dry pavement, but will hydroplane on wet surfaces.
The treads on a tire help prevent hydroplaning by directing water and sand out from under the contact surface.
The part you missed is race cars have to pull off the road and swap their slicks for treads when it rains even a tiny bit.
Being unable to drive at all during the rain is why normal cars use treads all the time and why the roads are textured instead of smooth. In the dry, smooth concrete with slick tires are the grippiest combo you can get. In the wet, it’s the worst. So to prevent people from having to change their tires at the first hint of rain, we use a decent combo for every condition. You know there’d be people going “it’ll be right, don’t need to change the tires yet” then crashing
Slicks are great on controlled surfaces like racetracks. Watch an F1 race when the rain starts falling, what do they do? They all get into the pit lanes and swap to treaded tires. It takes very little water on the road to make slicks dangerous as hell. That is just water, street cars contend with water, snow, ice, crappy pavement, etc.
They don’t.
As you correctly noted, a “slick” tire will have the most contact with a dry, flat, rigid surface, hence provide the great esthetic traction.
Unless it’s wet and the tire grooves move water out from under the contact patch.
Or it’s a loose or soft surface that the tread can actually grip onto.
If you took a set of regular road tires from any car, and made those same tires with no tread, they would perform better on asphalt road surfaces. The reason for tread on tires is rain and loose surface traction. It’s really as simple as that. If we could guarantee perfect road conditions all the time, we’d drive on slicks.
Take an eraser. Put it on a smooth glass table and push it. Easy to do right? Take a full 500ml water bottle and put it on the eraser and push it across the table. There’s a bit more friction. Put a 5lb weight on the eraser and there’s more friction.
The weight is pushing the rubber onto the glass, or in a car the weight pushes the tire onto the road.
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