| | | | | | | | |  | | | | Car owner and former NASCAR driver Andy Belmont shares his insight on what the crews in the shops are working on and talking about.
Blown tires happen. It's a fact of life. Out on the highway, you see the "alligators" that get spit off the wheel of trucks all the time. How many times have you had to swerve to miss one?
Tires blow out -- truck tires, trailer tires or race car tires -- because of heat or a puncture. Simple as that.
Race car tires in the tread area are extremely thin and in most cases, soft. This helps the tire grip the race track. In turn, the tire rubs the track adn creates friction, which we all know creates heat. The tire has to be thin to disipate the heat. Fairly simple.
A soft, hot tire is prone to picking up debris. The slightest little piece of asphalt stone sticking up the right way can puncture a race tire. So it's pretty important that when officials see the least little piece of debris on the track, they get it picked up so we don't run over it.
Now back to brake heat, which we discussed last week. Brake heat is what heats up the brake rotors. Intense braking doesn't give the outside air time to cool it down as much as we need, so then the brake rotor heats up the sidewall of the tire.
We have seen lots of blown tires at the short tracks, and the brake pedal gets the blame for heating the inside bead up until it gets soft and blows out. Now it looks like we have a similar situation with the new COT car. These cars are requiring a ton more braking than we are accustomed to using at the bigger tracks. So this has created a new dynamic to deal with.
Next thing we are dealing with is trying to get grip, plain and simple. Better grip means you drive it off in the corner harder and it sticks. Again, very simple. To get the grip is not so simple. We are now dealing with tremendous side load on the tires at the speed we run. We spend an immense amount of time working on getting the camber and what is called the camber gain correct on these cars.
If you are standing looking at the front of the car, the top of the right front tire (passenger side) is tilted toward the motor. The top of the left tire (the driver side) is tilted toward the infield pit area. This is called camber. Now as the cars springs and shocks go up and down this tilt changes as the car goes through this up and down motion. This is called camber gain. How much tilt does it "gain" or "lose" as it travels this motion?
This camber gain is a complex thing to get right. There are so many parts that make this all work and we can cover that in a next installment. Suffice to say that we haven't seen the last blown tire in racing!
Andy Belmont and his wife Jennifer co-own the ARCA REMAX SERIES number one driven by Tom Hessert III and NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES number 12.
Andy has raced for some 35 years winning races and championships, including the 1987 NASCAR Dash Series Rookie of the Year, 1988 Dash series owner champion and 1992 runner up for Winston Cup Rookie of Year. He is also a Top 10 points finisher 5 times in the ARCA REMAX Series.
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