why do racecars have to change tires so often? Usually tires are good for much longer than a day.
In: Engineering
1) Racing tires are under pretty extreme stress during the race, stresses that normal tires don’t really experience. Thus, it should come as no surprise that they degrade pretty quickly.
2) If your goal is to win the race, you need optimized performance out of the car, which means you need optimal tires. Even if the tires are still perfectly functional, they may have fallen off the performance cliff and thus you’re going to be going more slowly around the track than your competitors on newer tires.
3) It actually *is* possible to design tires that will last the entire race. In many series this is objected to out of cost concerns, but in others the tire degradation is actually deliberate because it helps make the race more interesting. This is doubly true in Formula 1, as the only way to *ensure* teams come into the pits is to swap tires, given that mid-race refueling is banned.
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