I’m totally cool with the public humiliation.
3 Likes
The esk8 Con racing surface at Gene Woods racing experience took me by surprise. I’ve been track racing since the mid 80s. In my years of racing this was my first experience with a polished smooth dirty concrete surface. One of the things I love about racing is you are always learning and acquiring new tools for the toolbox. We learned some things about urethane and rubber I never needed to consider before racing here. Here are my current thoughts on this.
Thane
Throughout the event Urathane seemingly maintained a majority of its grip unaffected by the polished surface. Dirt does not stick to Thane as easy as it does to rubber. My thoughts were the tire was able to clean itself and make a decent contact patch maintaining grip.
Rubber
We brought the widest and softest compound rubber tire to the event. We’re used to to having stuck down grip with this wheel on both concrete and asphalt racing surfaces. It turned out to be a poor choice for polished concrete.
Dirt stuck to the tire surface. It was clear there was not enough abrasion on the track surface to clean the tire every rotation.
Narrow pneumatics were performing better, some better than others, but not great. So what is the magic sauce for obtaining maximum grip on a shiny race surface using a rubber wheel. Here is my take. A stiletto heel on a 100lb lady puts 1000lb per square inch to the ground. With a narrow tire to smooth concrete contact patch you can create the heat and abrasion needed to make clean contact with the track surface. Knowing that rubbers grip to weight ratio, as you add weight, falls off at a point (its not linear). It happens sooner on soft tires and later on hard tires. We need to increase the rubber durometer as we decrease the contact patch to maintain the optimal grip to weight ratio. What is the patch size to rubber hardness combo that will make sauce?
Tire testing will tell us.
Looking forward to racing a shiny track.
Tools in the Box
Off the shelf tire that comes to mind.
The old Clever 6 shooter tire.
10 Likes
Very interesting. I wonder if the people with smaller pneummies (sunmate, evolve maybe) had an easier time
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Look at rally cars in the snow. (As well as being studded and shit) Narrow tires to cut through the snow. Wide contact patch isn’t always better.
3 Likes