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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Because car tires, especially sticky race tires achieve high friction through *two* methods.
First, like tires for rough surfaces, they conform to the surface and resist sliding. But this isn’t the knobby treads like you see on dirt/rally/snow tires that “dig in” to the surface. Treads on normal car tires are mostly to squish out water so the rubber can still contact the road when it’s wet.
Even smooth roads are rough at the level where you talk about denting rubber with the sandpaper like surface of the asphalt.
Second, road tires have a second method like an that adds much more than just the “roughness”. Once the tires get warm, they actually “glue”themselves to the road, and then peel it back up. It’s almost like driving around on wheels covered in tape or post-it note adhesive (or that sticky slime toy), except that rubber has been engineered to shed dirt and scrub off as the tire rolls so it continues to be tacky (unlike tape that gets covered in dirt and oil and gets less sticky)
The two effects combined, fast road tires and race tires have effective lateral friction coefficients anywhere from 1.2 (sports car tires) to 1.7 (Formula 1) times the vertical force applied. Then they apply giant wings and aerodynamics to increase downward pressure to achieve cornering forces up to 6G’s in F1!
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