First track day done but I think I need better tires

lhinojos

Noooooo. Lower the tire pressures. At the track with my conti DW's i was at 28 psi rear, and 30 front. The hotter they get, the higher the psi.

Jhill

I understand the concept of heat raises the pressure but the heat is from the friction of the tire. Less air pressure is more surface area and more heat which can lead to the tire compound overheating and that's when it gets melted and greasy. Just reading their car prep list it says to run higher psi 3-5 so I'm thinking they want to resist that heat build up causing the melting. I used door sticker psi and still melted the tire.

abm89

idk wtf you were reading, but that sounds ***-backwards. Your tires will melt, that's just going to happen when you put extreme loads into the compound. you also run the risk of a blowout with higher pressures, not to mention poor handling characteristics.

I agree with the other statements to run lower pressure cold when starting, and check the hot pressure and adjust accordingly.

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Jhill

Tires blow out from being under inflated which puts more contact patch down and overheats the tires (that's why ca now has it mandatory for shops to set correct tire pressures, also the whole ford/Firestone issue was ford having a door sticker inflation of 29psi when the tires weren't meant to run under 32 or something like that). Also if you look at a MB tire placard there is two psi setting, one for under a certain speed (lower psi) and one for over a certain speed where it puts more load on the tires and it is a higher psi.

However after speaking with a tire shop that handles a lot of track duty you are correct that they want to start a little low and then monitor tire temp and inflation pressure change in this case.