[urq] Tire pressure for ice racing ?

[Greg Smith]

I don't think that you can give a blanket statement as to a certain pressure for front or rears with plain snows.  In my 31 years of ice trials and ice racing; I have found that even within a specific tire brand when you have a certain model of tire vs another, they will perform differently with different pressures.  As an example the Nokian Hak NR09 used to work much better with a lower pressure than the Nokian Hak 2 or Hak Q.  On the same car there was a variation of over 9psi where I would get optimal times. I used to just go out to a lake and set up a basic course and start doing hundreds of laps and adjusting pressures.  I would bring out different tread patterns from Nokian and have at it for hours at a time.Just my .02 that thee is no magic PSi setting for all brands and models of snow tires.  I don't think that anyone has addressed that.
Greg Galinsky 

--- On Fri, 2/12/10, Louis-Alain Richard <laraa at sympatico.ca> wrote:

From: Louis-Alain Richard <laraa at sympatico.ca>
Subject: RE: Tire pressure for ice racing ?
To: vittorio at mybares.com
Cc: urq at audifans.com, quattro at audifans.com
Date: Friday, February 12, 2010, 8:35 AM

Thanks Vittorio,

 

So lower pressures are better on ice ? Interesting, since higher pressures are the way to go on tarmac… I’ll try that next week for sure.

 

Would you try to cure the inherent understeer by dropping the fronts more than the rears ? 

Or would you unlock the rear diff ?

 

About the different tires, the real snow tires are the Pirelli (very open tread) and since they are not ice tires, they propose to stud them. Nice, the only drawbacks are bad dry-cold tarmac traction, and noise.

But the question is : can a studless expensive tire like the Michelin be any good on ice ? Or at least, as good as the Pirelli ? I’m sure this Michelin won’t be any good in deep snow, the tread is not enough aggressive, but on ice, with its multiple sipes and its very soft rubber, I guess it could work. What do you think ?

 

Louis-Alain  

 

 

 

De : vittorio at mybares.com [mailto:vittorio at mybares.com] 
Envoyé : 12 février 2010 01:02
À : Louis-Alain Richard
Cc : urq at audifans.com; quattro at audifans.com
Objet : RE: Tire pressure for ice racing ?

 

On lake ice, I'll start at 26psi, and will typically endup in the low 20's...depends on conditions.

 

But, yeah, regardless if you're on studs or super snow, drop the pressure and you'll get better traction - but there's lots of variables:

-- how deep is the snow

-- how wide are the tires

-- what type of tread block are you running

-- temperature

-- etc...

 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Tire pressure for ice racing ?
From: "Louis-Alain Richard" <laraa at sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, February 11, 2010 6:25 pm
To: <urq at audifans.com>, <quattro at audifans.com>

Since I have at least 2 other outings this winter for some hot (cold ?) laps
on an ice track, I was wondering if I can improve traction by playing with
tire pressure and tire type.