How do you conserve tires? They keep rotating?

Question

Got into Formula 1 recently, and they constantly talk about “conserving tires”, but the tires are always on the road? It’s always spinning? Do they just mean go slower??? Why would you want to go slower in a race?

In: 2

Answer 1

In racing and F1 specifically it’s not the driving in a straight line that tends to wear out the tires, it’s the braking and cornering.

Concrete is a very abrasive surface which is both good for grip and terrible for tire wear. The very act of driving on it tears rubber off the tires and buries in in the surface of the tarmac. The drivers actually refer to this as rubbering in the track as this thin layer of rubber improves the traction of the surface of the road allowing the cars to go faster. You can actually see the racing line getting darker as the race goes on.

As you brake the tire slows down its rotation with much of the energy absorbed by the brakes in the form of heat, but part of the cars speed it bled off by the tires friction against the ground. This tears off the rubber.

In the corners the lateral G-forces want to push the cars sideways. This tears the rubber off the tires sideways as well creating little balls of rubber called marbles. This is what litters the track with rubber.

F1 tires are also very soft by design compared to much harder road tires. At temperature putting you hand on an F1 tire is like touching hot chewing gum. This makes the tires a lot grippier so the cars can go faster, but the softer compounds wear out more quickly.

So why conserve tires?

Changing tires in a pit stop costs time, and under the current rules going a little slower and not taking the corners as harshly costs you less time during a race than an extra pit stop. You also have to consider the risks of something going wrong in a pitstop.

Back in the 00’s though the tires lasted longer because the Michelines and Bridgestones had better and more durable compounds, and re-fueling was allowed. So the teams had much longer pit stops anyway so changing the tires made sense.

The current range of Pirelli tires are *intentionally* designed to wear out more quickly to “Improve the show” causing the cars to wear out their tires prematurely.

There’s absolutely no reason they couldn’t make the tires last the whole race.